JOURNAL

The 2020 Paradigm Shift



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THE YEAR ONE THING BECOMES THE ONE THING NEEDFUL

2020 has been a ‘time of trouble’(Psalm 27:5). Consequently, many are asking: “How is the Lord calling His Church to respond to Him in this crisis-ridden year?“

The answer is the same solution the Lord issued to David later in Psalm 27: “In the time of trouble… Seek My Face!” (Psalm 27:5, 8)

When the Lord called David to “seek His Face”, He was calling him to something more than a singular event. The Lord’s exhortation to David was to cultivate a lifestyle, and then create a cultural vehicle where the people could cultivate a lifestyle of encountering the presence of God.

This vehicle was ultimately the “temple of the Lord”, dedicated by David’s son, Solomon. On the day that it was dedicated, this is how the Lord met His people who were entering into His paradigm:

“When Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord’s house. When all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down, and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed their faces to the ground on the pavement, and worshiped and praised the Lord, saying: ‘For He is good, For His mercy endures forever’.” (2 Chronicles 7:1-3)

Once it was established, the temple shaped every aspect of the way Israel related to God.

In our day the Lord is issuing a similar summons to His people. He’s calling us to adjust our foundational experience of how we relate to Him so that encountering the dialoguing presence of the Lord becomes the Church’s essential normal. 

This alignment is the fulfillment of the famous prophetic word Mike Bickle received in 1982 in Cairo Egypt – a promise from God that launched thousands of Houses of Prayer throughout the world over the last two decades: “I will shift the understanding and expression of Christianity in one generation.”

This shift is about establishing a cultural norm within families, churches, prayer groups, men’s groups, ministry boards, workplaces, and FB friends of seeking the face of God together so that we become known as a people who expect to hear from the Lord in all of our gathering together.

The Lord expresses His desire for intimate, holy communing with His people all throughout scripture – from Genesis and Enoch, to Exodus and Moses, to Psalms and David, to the prophets, to Jesus’ prayer in John 17, to the apostle’s testimonies and Jesus’ walking among the Churches in Revelation. Though it may have many expressions, walking in this paradigm of corporate prayer with the Lord will be based on giving ourselves to several elemental, and life-producing dynamics:
A. We must come before Him, with a poor spirit that’s intent to listen for His voice; not to reenforce arguments for our own narratives.

B. We must repent of every high place in our hearts; every small and faithless place He shows us where we’ve forced our own ways.

C. We must learn to weep and mourn together over the unrighteous ways in our lives, our churches, our families and our culture. And that we weep with those who are suffering from the curse of unrighteousness.

D. We must teach others how to mine the Word of God for the whole Word of God; the famous scriptures, and the profoundly painful scriptures, and we posture ourselves before the Word of God; to be shaped by it – with an expectation that the Man looking at us back through our Bibles is coming, and will have His way on the earth.

E. We must cultivate an abiding, honest fear of the Lord, and hungry appreciation for the mercy of the Lord, that goes as deep as our theological understanding of the love of the Lord.

F. We must allow the Holy Spirit to cleanse us, prune us, baptize us, and crucify us to the center of the center of our being; examining our ways and our motives.

G. We must fix our eyes on one reality; one glory; one burning Truth; one Man. And that we learn to revel in the strength and Words of life that only He can bring.

H. We must continue in this until we walk, think, dialogue in perfect peace regardless of the tribulation/trouble/terrors that swirl around us.

I. We must lay down our many temptations to save, justify and exalt self in order to take up our cross for the sake of first commandment love for Him and His ascending glory. (That we learn the wisdom of knowing that all this is not about us.)

God bless the many passionate sacred assemblies called in our nation over the last 20 to 25 years. Many convocations have used 2 Chronicles 7:13-17 to rally the body of Christ to seek God’s face together.    
“When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place. For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. As for you… walk before Me as your father David walked, and do according to all that I have commanded you, and… keep My statutes and My judgments…” (2 Chronicles 7:13-17)

However, it must be noted that the context for the people who are called by My name doing 2 Chronicles 7 is directly connected to what happened earlier in the chapter. They had already vowed to be a people who would live out the norm of engaging the Lord through the paradigm of the temple. They had agreed to accept God’s new standard of seeking His face in every aspect of their lifestyles.

This order has massive implications for how the Church responds to the Lord in 2020. I believe the Lord has been inviting His people to trade in our wineskins (Luke 5:36-39) and relate to Him in a foundationally intimate, prayerful and dialogical way for decades in America. As someone who’s been walking in evangelical circles of leadership since the 80’s, I can say with some degree of education, I believe this is what the Lord has had in mind for the “prayer movement” all along.

There’s a lot that can be said here. It’s sufficient to point out that the evangelical church in America has spent the better part of 40 years neglecting to enter into God’s paradigm of prayer, and mostly relegated God’s universal invitation to specialized “intercessors”.  God bless the intercessors. There’s a great deal the whole Church has to learn from those who have been giving themselves to intercession in this hour, but on the whole, the distinction between an “intercessor” vs. a “regular New Testament believer” is a thoroughly unBiblical implementation of God’s intent.

It’s normally only been as we’ve encountered crises (hurricanes, fires, 911, supreme court decisions, presidential elections etc.) that the larger swath of the Church has sought out God’s solution. But the Lord wants more than crisis-prayer. Crisis-prayer is employing only a part (and not the whole) of God’s 2 Chronicles 7 prescription. 

It’s vital that we see this from God’s perspective. When we only engage prayer as an event, or in crisis, we’re in effect telling God, “We don’t want a life of communing with You; just what’s necessary to the success of the rest of our lives please.”

Again, as a Bible-toting participant/observer/leader in the prayer movement over the last 40 years, I have come to believe that the Lord is deeply grieved at this minimalist application of prayer. We’re essentially telling Him that we want His rescuing power in our lives, but are not too keen on have all that much daily, intimate, interaction with Him.

Personally, I believe the Lord has been saying throughout this year, “I’m not asking you to gather in sacred assemblies, or unlock secret strategies and warfare tactics in order to get Me to fix your political, cultural, and spiritual paradigms. I want you to enter Mine!”

What then do we do? How are we to engage God in His new paradigm?
• We must throw ourselves on the mercy of God. 
• We must get ourselves anchored to the place of prayer until He proves from the scriptures where we are, today. 
• We must understand that the Lord isn’t about making ourselves, our church experiences, or our nation great. 
• We must figure out that what’s happening in our world is not primarily about us at all.
It’s about Who’s coming; Who’s at our doorstep; Who’s shaking our world; our circumstances and our hearts – and then learn to tremble at His greatness. He’s a Bridegroom returning for His Bride who’s making herself ready.  He’s a King Who’s coming to establish His Kingdom on the earth. He’s a Judge who will execute human beings who oppose Him and the administration of His reign in our world. (Real people are going to perish in the way (Psalm 2:12) at His hand!)

This is an hour to ask, “What must we do to be in line with the increase of His government? What can we do to marshal everything to His increase? How do we do life? How do we do Church? How do we relate to our enemies?”
Like Hezekiah, this is an hour to resist the great temptation to apply civil/political solutions to the deep crevices in our relationship with the Lord, and to prioritize the one thing (Psalm 27:4) that has the capacity to supply us with His sufficient strength (Psalm 27:1) in the time of trouble (Psalm 27:5).

My strongest pastoral advice (my only pastoral advice) is that if you do not find reason to engage in corporate prayer; if you know of others who do not; if you’re not convinced of what’s at stake, and cannot see the trouble of this last year has no earthly solution, that you put down your favorite news sites, put away the white noise of social media, and, with all urgency, get before the God of Hebrews 12; Psalm 2; Psalm 27 and Matthew 24 and 25. Get others before Him for the sole purpose of seeking His Face and beholding Him in His omnipotent glory.

2020 is telling us it’s time to admit the deficiency of our ways and meet God in His paradigm of one thing.

“One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. For in the time of trouble…” (Psalm 27:4,5)

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JSB • October, 2020

God’s Remedy for the Pressures of “the time of trouble”

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Friday, November 27, 2020
Arguing FOR church restrictions for the sake of protecting the most vulnerable, or AGAINST restrictions for the sake of religious liberty, matters nothing if the people of God are intent on ignoring what He’s calling His people to do in “the time of trouble”…

“Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God… Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes; let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who minister to the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar.” (Joel 2:12-13; 16-17)

Through the pressures of episode after episode in 2020, the furtive ways of our hearts are being exposed and invited to be adjusted to the ways of the Lord’s heart.

Of course, in order to adjust our hearts to His heart, we must first see what’s in His heart…

“When You said ‘seek My face’, I said, ‘O Lord, Your Face I will seek’.” (Psalm 27:8)
#SeekMyFace2020

Transitioning to His Government of Pure Righteousness

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Over the last 6 months, the Lord has been teaching me a lot about the way and reason for His judgements on the Church, and the world. 

One intriguing aspect of the Lord’s judgement of the Church is the fact that in this “one-of-a-kind” hour the Holy Spirit is preparing us (who are now on the earth) for transitioning to the literal, earthly reign of His Son.

No other generation has this privilege. But if we take the return of Jesus seriously (as we should), then one generation WILL necessarily “not die” (Mark 13:30) and be incredibly translated from one realm to another realm; a temporal, fallen, dim reality into an eternal, perfect and brilliant reality – in nano-seconds! 

Friends. I don’t do well when I have to acclimate from the moderate temperature of the mountains of Arizona to Phoenix. How am I going to acclimate from the corruption of this age, to the glory of the next age in mere seconds??? The mere idea gives me brain freeze.

Allow me to explain: If Jesus were to return today, there is SO MUCH in my heart, soul and mind, (we get new bodies, “halleluia”) that would be unprepared to live in His eternal realm. One of the most notable would be the agreement of my will with His perfect order and will. A lot can be said here. But the fact of the matter is, our wills will not become automatically compliant to the will of heaven on that day. It will require a process; a process that will entail eternal learning, understanding and appreciating. 

When Jesus returns, I dare say, there will still be a lot in me that doesn’t understand His ways. Though, I may subscribe to them as “beautiful” (Revelation 15:3), it doesn’t mean that I’ve comprehended them, and find myself in wholehearted appreciation of them. 

There will even be portions of my heart and mind that so misunderstand His ways that I am “offended” or “stunned” (not quite the right words) by the way He governs the nations, and our hearts.

Case-in-point: The disciples were continually tripping over Jesus’ Words and actions and teachings. Even after Peter’s confession, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, they evidenced a marvelous capacity to be clueless about the ways of Messiah. And although growing, their heart attitudes were perpetually being realigned with the perfect heart attitude of the Son of God. (Duh.)

What will WE be tripping over when we see Him face to face?   (Revelation 22:4) These issues don’t necessarily have to be “sin issues”, though, in this age, they frequently are. These issues can also be maturity issues. 

Mike Bickle likes to say, “The fact that my love for God is weak, doesn’t make it insincere.” 

Beloved, ALL His ways are love! We have SO MUCH to GROW UP IN (Ephesians 4:15) the way of Christ… Undoubtably, we will continue in this maturity process for all eternity. My heart, my soul, my physical being and my mind will increasingly grow, mature and develop in perfect love – for God, AND for the rest of the Church and creation.

This quality of love is synonymous with “righteousness”, which literally means “the right order and way of the King”. Righteousness is the government of heaven. One day it will fully be the government of earth. It is the way the Trinity relates to each other. (There’s a ton of room for our growth in righteousness.) 

The judgements of God today, are meant to teach us righteousness (Isaiah 26:9) and to prepare our hearts to live wholeheartedly under the order of Jesus’ government. In this way, God’s judgements today, actually serve as inoculations against the rebellious disease of unrighteousness, so that we can thrive deeper and deeper in the ocean of God’s righteous ways.

An example: When we travel to other countries, foreign environments, it’s wise for us to be immunized against diseases that are found in that region of the world. These immunizations entail actually being injected with small doses of these diseases so our immune systems may build up a defense system against these diseases;. This is how the process of being immunized works. Our bodies are ostensibly “learning righteousness” through the injections of the disease itself.

When Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2 “The LORD will send them a delusion”, in essence he is describing the Lord giving the earth, and the Church small doses of unrighteousness in order to strengthen our hearts to pursue righteousness. He is actually judging/purging/preparing us (1 Peter 4:17) by giving us a context whereby we may build up a strong Christlike spirit that has the internal capacity to celebrate, rather than militate against, the ways of Christ’s rule – all in preparation for our “being like Him” (1 John 3:2) when we see Him face to face, and living with understanding and joy, under His reign in the next age.

I believe this is also what Peter is referring to when he speaks of the Church’s ability to “hasten” (2 Peter 3:12) the return of the Lord. It is also what John is referring to when he describes what he heard in heaven: “The Bride has made herself ready!”(Revelation 19:7) 

Being made ready entails the Church on the earth actually learning and living the ways of Jesus’ government, now – today – in the midst of conflict, persecution, hostility, temptation, peril, disunity, unforgiveness, carnality, death, rebellion and demonic rage. 

When we learn to “do righteousness” (1 John 3:7) here on earth, in unity with the whole body of Christ together, in the mind and Spirit of Christ Himself, the Lord will release the greatest harvest the world has ever seen. We will be a living witness of the government of Jesus, AND a testimony of the power of God to enact phenomenal transformation in the human soul, AND in human relationships. And because it will be a testimony that arises in the context of a world filled with unrighteousness, it will ultimately say to the enemy, and “those under the earth”(Philippians 2:10), that Jesus’ Lordship, even in the context of sin, is potent and attractive, and transformative, and has prevailed over the “gates of hell” (Matthew 16:18). 

We will then also become active, intercessory participants when Jesus returns to judge the unrighteous nations with “the sword of His mouth” (Revelation 19:21). We will hail Him as the righteous, true and rightful King of the whole earth. We will rejoice in the inauguration (Revelation 11:15) of His reign with full, joyous, equipped, prepared, tested and resolute hearts – hearts that have been tried in the fires of temptation, calamity and delusion.

Until then we must submit ourselves to His definition of righteousness. We must herald and lovingly, but fastidiously champion His government of righteousness in our lives and in our world. We must let the Holy Spirit bring the body into unity in this righteousness, under the reign of Jesus’ government/Lordship. (This is so important.) And we must dialogue with each other “in truth and love” so that we come to the maturity of our collective faith (Ephesians 4:15) – the maturity that all heaven has longed for, and so, (in essence) “call back” the return of our King with one united cry on earth: “Maranatha!” (1 Corinthians 16:22)

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JSB • November, 2020

4 Dynamics to Preserve Our Soul in the End-Times

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Four dynamics will mark “Christians” who are putting their souls at risk in the end-times:
1. Prayerlessness (no development of private and corporate prayer as a life-style.)

2. Crosslessness (not allowing the Holy Spirit to apply of the Word of God to one’s life; bringing self to death and Jesus to the forefront of our lives.)

3. Lovelessness (enticed and exhilarated by the flurry of sensory temptations of the hour, there is no primary pursuit of first-commandment love for Jesus.)

4. Abrogation of the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle (a life that gives itself permission to operate independently of the 55 admonitions of Matthew 5, 6 & 7, resulting in a life of lawlessness and meager faith.)

If we aim at cultivating all four of these dynamics, we will preserve our soul and help other’s preserve their’s as well.

“But we are not among those who shrink back and thus perish, but are among those who have faith and preserve their souls.” (Hebrews 10:39)

Manifesting Jesus through Weakness

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Click here for a link to this MESSAGE (Recorded at The International House of Prayer Kansas City)

We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not destroyed – always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (2 Corinthians 4:7-11)

God Has Placed a Treasure in You!
God has placed a great treasure in you! The apostle Paul writes that this treasure is “the Knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

The treasure that Paul spoke of is nothing less than the real, living presence of Jesus Christ within every born-again believer. Jesus promises, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. (John 14:23) Paul writes to the Galatians: I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you. (Galatians 4:19) Paul also writes about this stunning reality in his letter to the Corinthians:  Do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?  (2 Corinthians 13:5) Every sacrifice we make to pursue the increase of this treasure within us testifies to His great worth and value.

The Treasure in You is Vibrant!
People who intentionally and sacrificially position their hearts before the burning revelation of Jesus’ glory, with a “yes” in their spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18) are made increasingly brilliant; transformed by an intensifying weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). While it is more fully manifested in the next age, this treasure is meant to shine ever brighter (Prov. 4:18) in this age within our minds, spirits, emotions, will and loving attitudes toward others.

The Treasure in You is Viral!
Around the world, God is expanding His Kingdom and filling believers with His brilliant presence in ways that can only be described as “viral”; meaning, in ways that are very free from the mediation of human agency. We are sober to carry Jesus’ primary mandate to go and “preach the gospel” – but we rejoice (Acts 10:40) whenever we find that Jesus is doing so much of the work ahead, and often, completely independent from us.

Jesus promises to build His Church. (Matt. 16:18) And it is God who commanded light to shine out of the darkness, who has shone in our hearts. (2 Corinthians 4:6)  Each of us are recipients of His mercy and none may take credit for the gracious, transformative activity of His Spirit.

In my opinion, the House of Prayer movement has exploded in sovereign, viral ways. My own introduction to the wealth of IHOP came through a series of God-orchestrated events; not through the strategic intervention of man, or my own deductive reasoning.

In the Fall of 2001 I received a prophetic word from the Lord that took me two days to receive and has taken 15 more years to materialize. In the prophetic word God told me of a movement that would emphasize singing and result in a great harvest, even while much of the rest of the evangelical culture struggled in barrenness, and our nation experienced terror and collapse. The two days that I received this major word from the Lord were September 9 & 10, 2001.

Two weeks later God gave me a dream about Lou Engle leading young adults through a shopping mall praying over closed shop-gates, while Larry Tomczak, a man that I respected as a powerful evangelist, waited to preach. Two days after the dream, I received an advertisement for a One Thing Conference that was held in Kansas City. Two of the main speakers were to be Lou Engle and Larry Tomczak.

Over the next several years, I would write, teach, promote, develop prayer classes and programs with the aim of stimulating individuals to embrace prayer and the Bridegroom paradigm. In spite of my zeal, my advocacy was not the persuasive element that won people to the movement. Often, an individual would show up to a meeting and tell us that they had a dream, a visitation, or an inexplicable burst of passion to pursue Jesus in prayer and worship. Over these years God drew scores of people to His extravagant love. They hungered for Mike’s Song of Song’s teachings, attended IHOP conferences and entered internships as the Spirit kindled their hearts with love for the Bridegroom.

In 2006, I wrote about what I was experiencing with the House of Prayer: “The Spirit is incubating a supernatural (Ezekiel 37:10) army in the House of Prayer that He will release into an asthmatic church and a distressed world. The DNA of this work is viral (Acts 10:44) and it is being borne on the very breath of God.”

In less than 20 years, the growth of the Prayer Movement around the word has been nothing less than viral!

God Cultivates and Enriches His Treasure Within Us in Unconventional Ways
It also pleases God to put His treasure in obscure places. Consider the context of God’s decision to put His treasure in you. There are more galaxies in the universe (300 billion), than there are stars in our galaxy (200 billion). And our God, fills the whole universe! (Jeremiah 23:24) He chooses one solar system on the spiral arm of one galaxy; and then chooses one planet (not even the largest) in that configuration where He chooses to shape little, clay pots; and then he declares: “This is where I will put the treasure that I plan to cultivate and reign with, forever!” Anyone who considers the macro-context of God’s work in us must ask the question: “Why?” From our human perspective God’s choice seems very curious.

He Places His Valuable Treasure within Fragile Vessels in Turbulent Conditions
Receiving the gift of Jesus’s presence in our lives is not the beginning of a sheltered and sanitized lifestyle. Although Jesus operates in a consistently faithful manner, saying yes to His presence is most often like saying yes to a whirlwind. He is lovingly and relentlessly committed to restructuring and refining our hearts to magnify His presence.

In 2006, on my way back from the House of Prayer in Kansas City, God spoke in an audible in-my-ear voice and declared my twenty-plus years of ministry to be breathless. He also placed a weeping burden in my soul (in a very-crowded Phoenix airport) declaring that the evangelical church in America was breathless. I didn’t fully understand it then, but I was entering a turbulent season of radical renovation.

It pleases Him to put His treasure in vessels who are prone to being crushed, perplexed and persecuted so that we learn, as Thomas a’Kempis elegantly observes: “how to trust under His wings and not trust in our own.”

In 2007 Barb, my wife of 23 years, contracted stomach cancer. In a matter of days hundreds of people were praying for her healing. Friends from the churches in our community started to pray 24 hours a day in a little camper trailer outside of our home. Nonetheless, in two, short months, Barb died. Abruptly, I was a 48 year old widower with two twelve-year-old girls – and a very breathless pastor.

Still, it took me another year and a half before I yielded to the changes the Holy Spirit wanted to make in my life and begin a work of liberating “self -less-ness”. In the Spring of 2009; very weak and breathless, I resigned from 20 years of professional ministry to simply meet with Jesus in a tent of meeting.

He Cultivates His Treasure in You through Weakness
One of the first lessons that Jesus taught me in this tent of meeting was the “blessedness of being poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). The Holy Spirit told me that He could not give me this blessedness because in nearly every aspect of my life I was striving to be rich.

We don’t do weakness well, and we bristle at the admission of our own inability. We want to be a Forerunner, yet we chafe at being forged through weakness.
It pleases the Father to hide His treasure; the formation of His Son, within human weakness for several reasons.

  • He wants to hide us in weakness, because He loves us and longs to heal our wounds as our weakness rests in His strength.
  • God’s treasure hides well in weakness. Satan can smell pride a Solar System away. Weakness is where we learn to trust the depth and breadth of His perfect protection.
  • Weakness is where we learn to trust Him and the strength of His grace. He brilliantly cultivates His treasure in weakness. Even though I didn’t enjoy it in my flesh, two weeks after a recent 21 day fast I wrote about the wisdom of making ourselves weak for His sake: “After the fast I have a deeper awareness of my own barrenness and inability to unlock & release and increase the power & glory of God. I also have an even deeper and growing sense of how much God desires to increase His glorious presence in my barrenness & inability.”
  • He hides His treasure in us in weakness because it’s the way of Jesus. No one had more of the treasure of God within them, than the God/Man Jesus Christ.
    Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God … made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond-servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man…HE HUMBLED HIMSELF… and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a CROSS.  – Philippians 2:5 & 8

He Enriches the Treasure within Us as we Bear His Cross
Ultimately, the Holy Spirit brings us to weakness, in order to bring us to death on the cross. The way of increased glory and manifestation of Kingdom power through a believer’s life always comes through our participation in the cross! Bob Sorge notes: “If it were so for Jesus, should we expect to find increase through an alternative route?”

Let’s return to our passage in 2 Corinthians 4, where the apostle Paul declares: “We always carry about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” The grammar and syntax of this statement gives believers one function in their pursuit of manifesting the life of Jesus. The active role of the believer is not to generate a resurrection. Indeed, we cannot! Paul explicitly says that our role is to always carry about in our bodies the dying of the Lord, Jesus. If the apostle Paul said he always did something wouldn’t you want to what that is?

“Carrying about in our bodies the dying of the Lord, Jesus” is a mystery of the highest level; and yet, one way that we practically live it out is by heeding Jesus primary command in (Matthew 16:24) “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”

“We often speak of our abiding in Christ. But we forget that that means the abiding in a crucified Christ. Many believers appear to think that when once they have claimed Christ’s death in the fellowship of the cross, and have counted themselves as crucified with Him, that they may now consider it as past and done with. They do not understand that it is in the crucified Christ, and in the fellowship of His death, that they are to abide daily and unceasingly.” – Murray, Andrew The Secret of The Cross

We have wanted a church without a real cross and a cross without a real grave. We’ve wanted a glorious Christianity, but we have cared little for the refining fire (Revelation 3:18) through which such a treasure is produced.

Too often, the church has presented the cross as a tool unto self sacrifice, when Jesus taught that bearing the cross is primarily about the sacrifice of self. Consequently, the church has left the idols on the high places of the human heart and failed to teach disciples how to apply the cross to their opinions, attitudes, priorities, mores, ministry plans and ambitions. Bearing the cross is about more than curbing wanton acts and enduring rigorous disciplines; it’s about killing the intrinsic ways of the self!

Five Ways of the Self the Holy Spirit Puts to Death through the Cross

1. Self-Glorification and Making a Name for Ourselves:
It’s essential that we let the cross crucify our ambitious pursuit of the world’s definition of success (applause, material wealth & comfort and credit etc.) Putting the craving for self-glorification to death also includes dying to self-promotion that does not wait on God’s timing, contends with others and/or falsifies self to achieve it’s objective. Self-glorification
is antithetical to meekness.

2. Self-Gratification:
Our whole culture is obsessed with securing inordinate wealth, security, comfort and fame. This preoccupation has greatly consumed the church so that too often we treat the gospel as a self-help or life-management tool that merely has as it’s end-result, to make lives work. Cultivating the treasure of Jesus in our lives involves renouncing a self-absorbed lifestyle of unchecked self-gratification.

3. Self-Determination:
We, like Paul, are BOND-SERVANTS of Christ, Jesus. (Romans 1:1) As a “bond-servant” we are not free to choose our own way. The way of a Christ-bearer is the way of Christ, our redeemer; our Lord; our Master. (1 Corinthians 6:19) “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit Who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?”

4. Self-Sufficiency:
One of the most difficult areas to discern and bring to death is our unbridled reliance upon the wealth of our human ability (ie. Expertise, Wealth, Institutionalism, Sophistry & Religious Zeal etc.) The can-do American Church has an endless amount of resource, ability, energy and creativity to extend the Kingdom of God. Without carrying about in our bodies the dying of Jesus, the American Evangelical community remains hyper-reliant upon her own power to minister, evangelize, build churches, and nourish mature believers. With no parameter, she can build structures and programs that are un-empowered by the Spirit and may even detract from the brilliance of the true treasure of the Church.
“Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ Says the LORD of hosts.” (Zechariah 4:6)

5. Self-Evaluation:
(1 Corinthians 4:3, 5) “For me it is a minor matter for me to be judged by you, or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself… So then, do not judge anything before the time. Wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the motives of hearts. They each will receive recognition from God.” Paul writes that he does not judge himself; he does not evaluate himself along the way. He has given up the right to determine what is valuable; what is of merit; what is worthless, and what is futile within himself. The Lord is free to use it all; the great and the small; the gifts and the weaknesses – for His good. What counts is not our estimation of what we give Him, but His. The wisdom of bringing our self-evaluation to death is that dying to this foul, critical way liberates us from both a haughty spirit and a self-deprecating spirit.

Uncrucifed, these five ways of the self diminish the glory of God, debase the value of the treasure in our lives, attempt to domesticate and subjugate the Spirit, profoundly short-circuit the dynamic power of the church and delude believers into blind allies of self-empowerment.

Too often believers have turned a blind eye to these self-idols, and have raised up ministries that, after seasons of wonderful increase, discover they are plateaued, obstructed and perplexed (2 Corinthians 4:8) rather than fruitfully fulfilling the Spirit’s purposes.

Cross-Bearing 101 for the Forerunner
If weakness unto cross-bearing and death-to-self is where the Holy Spirit is leading the Church, then a chief task of the forerunner is to die first!

In this hour, we dare not spare any part of our lives and our ministries from the scrutinizing fire of the Holy Spirit. The fact is, much of what has been left uncrucifed in our culture has not been crucified simply because the Holy Spirit wields the power of the Cross against so much of our best stuff. And for too long, it’s precisely “our best stuff” that’s been hindering us from receiving God’s I AM stuff. The crucifixion of Jesus tells us that the cross is ruthless in what it brings to death. It not only kills what is objectionable and offensive – but it also brings to death that which looks grand and glorious. Crucifixion of self requires a spiritual violence (Matthew 11:12).

Our primary focus must be our Magnificent Obsession: the manifestation of Jesus (our spiritual treasure) within our lives. John the Baptist’s moniker was not I must decrease and He must increase. He stated the dynamic in it’s right order. His pre-occupation was the increased revelation of Jesus, not on what needed to be decreased in his own life. John says, “He must increase and in the increase of His revelation we find the power to decrease and die.” The revelation of Jesus within our lives must remain the forerunner’s incessant obsession! We cannot allow our conscience to become fixated on what we think needs to be crucified next. That’s the Holy Spirit’s work, not ours!

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, revelations of Jesus can actually help put us to death!

  • Ask the Holy Spirit to give you a specific REVELATION about Jesus (ie. Holy Spirit, reveal Jesus to me as the One Who was pierced. [Revelation 1:7])
  • Ask the Holy Spirit to show you what inside you RESISTS, or is perplexed by this revelation of Jesus. (ie. Holy Spirit, show me where there is any resistance or inhibition to my receiving Jesus as the One Who was pierced.)
  • RENOUNCE (and REPENT if necessary) those aspects of your life that struggle with the appropriation of this dimension of Jesus in your life. Yield all that is not in agreement with this aspect of Jesus to the cross! (ie. Crucify the part of my heart that is slow to believe that He loves me that much. Crucify the coldness within me that fails to cherish the magnificent worth of His sacrifice.)
  • Crucify the aspects of your heart that are indifferent, or opposed to Who He is. (Galatians 5:24) Bring these thoughts and attitudes to a merciless end.
  • REQUEST that Jesus, the treasure inside you, increase (Proverb 4:18) His RADIANCE within you!

Remember, the Holy Spirit’s phenomenal purpose in giving us increased revelations about Jesus is so the incarnational treasure of Jesus, is actually manifested within us.

And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him. (1 John 3:2)

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JSB • December, 2013