The Pathway to the Christ-Life (2) - Being Emptied - Part 4

TRUSTING GOD - Contd.

In Part 3 through Abraham's life, we learnt that service which is a result of God working through us will remain for eternity. Everything else will be burnt up. Now, let us learn about...

No confidence in the flesh
In Gen.17:11, we learn that after thirteen years of waiting, when God appeared to Abraham again, He gave him a covenant of circumcision. Circumcision involved a cutting-off and a casting-off of human flesh. It symbolized a casting off of all confidence in self - as Paul explains in Philippians 3:3: "We are the circumcision... who have no confidence in the flesh."

We should notice that, in the very same year that Abraham obeyed God and circumcised himself, Isaac was conceived (Gen. 17:1 and 21:5). There is a lesson for all of us to learn here. God waits until we learn to put no confidence in ourselves and our abilities. And when we finally come to the place where we realize that it is impossible for us in ourselves to serve God and please Him (Rom. 8:8), and when we trust God to work through us, then He takes us up and does an eternal work through us. At the age of 85, the birth of a child to Abraham looked difficult. By the time he was 99 and impotent, that which had been difficult had now become impossible. Then God acted.

Someone has said that in a true work of God, there are three stages - Difficult, Impossible and Done! Human wisdom finds it difficult to follow such reasoning, for spiritual truth is foolishness to the natural mind. But this is God's way.

No flesh will ever be able to glory in God's presence, either now or in eternity (1 Cor. 1:29). God is working to the point where finally Christ will have the pre-eminence in all things (Col. 1:18). If there is going to be some work in Heaven, which lasts for eternity, which has been done by human ingenuity and cleverness, then all through eternity some man will be able to take credit for it. But God is going to make sure that it will not be so. All that ministers to human glory will be burnt up at the judgement seat of Christ. Here on earth, men may receive the credit for something they do, but that will all be reduced to ashes before we reach the shores of eternity. One of these days, God will gather up all things in Christ and then throughout eternal ages Christ alone will have the pre-eminence.

Jessie Penn-Lewis was a woman whose writings have helped many people understand the way of the cross. About ten years after her conversion, when seeking to be filled with the Holy Spirit, she tells of how she got a terrible revelation. She saw a hand holding up a bundle of filthy rags and a gentle voice saying, "This is the outcome of all your past service for God". She protested that she had been consecrated to the Lord for years. But the Lord told her that all her service had been merely consecrated SELF - the outcome of her own energy and her own plans. And then she heard one word spoken to her, "Crucified". She had not asked to be crucified, she thought, but to be filled. But she rested on that one word and came to know Jesus as the Risen Lord!!

Self must be crucified, before there can be any service that pleases God. We may serve God with all our hearts and then say, "Lord, please accept these Ishmaels that I have produced." But God will say "No"! He will say "No" now and say "No" in eternity.

Through this lesson let us all learn to crucify our self and everything that gives eminence to our self. Let us seek to glorify God in everything that we do. Let us constantly pray that God Almighty might guide us in our difficult times and let His wisdom guide us. Also to help us not to take credit for everything that happens in our life, but give credit to God for the blessing in our life.

I would like to take this time to thank Zac Poonen for his wonderful book "Beauty for Ashes". The above has been taken from the same book. 

I would like all my Brothers and Sisters in Christ to pray for me so that the Lord Almighty guide me, not in presenting the words from other people but also to open my mind His Holy Words and understand them and first accept those words in my life and then present those words to you all.

Your humble Brother in Christ

Jobin George

The Pathway to the Christ-Life (2) - Being Emptied - Part 3

TRUSTING GOD - Contd.

In the previous part 2, we learned that our self life can be so subtle as well as it can be very deceitful that it can enter the very sanctuary of God and try to serve Him there. Gods's work has to be a work of faith, a work that originates in man's helpless dependence upon God. So now, let us learn about...

Man's extremity - God's opportunity

Isaac, unlike Ishmael, was not the product of Abraham's strength. Abraham had become sterile by then. (This can be understood from Rom. 4:19 where not only Sarah's womb but Abraham's body is also said to be "dead"). Isaac was born through God strengthening impotent Abraham. This is the type of service that last forever. One "Isaac" is worth a thousand "Ishmaels"s. Just like Ishmael was cast out by Abraham on God's saying  (Gen. 21:10-14) and Isaac was allowed to stay with Abraham, all "Ishmaels' will have to be cast out one day.

The lesson here is that service which is a result of God working through us will remain for eternity. Everything else will be burnt up. You may have heard the saying, "Only one life, it will soon be past; only what's done for Christ will last." But it would be more accurate to say, "Only what Christ does through me will last".

Only that which is "from Him and through Him and to Him" (Rom.11:36) will last for eternity.

Paul lved and labored acccording to God's living and working through him (Gal. 2:20 and Col. 1:29). Hence his life and labors were so effective. He lived by faith and he worked by faith.

In Gen. 16:16, we read that Abraham was 86 yrs old when Hagar bore Ishmael. In the very next verse (Gen. 17:1), we read that Abraham was 99 yrs old when God appeared to him again. We see here a gap of 13 years. Those were the years when God waited for Abraham to become impotent, so that He could fulfill His promise. That is God's way with all His servants. He cannot work through them till they recognize their impotence. And in some cases, He has to wait for many years.

Abraham needed to learn what it really meant to trust God. He had to learn that it was only when he became impotent that he could truly exercise faith. In  Rom. 4:19-21, we read that although Abraham knew that hiss body was impotent to produce a son, yet that did not worry him. He was strong in faith and glorified God by believing that God was well able to perform what He had promised. He did not waver in disbelief, for his feet stood firm on the rock of God's Word to him. But when could Abraham exercise such faith? Only when he had come to an end of all confidence in his own ability. We too can exercise real faith only when we reach that state of utter helplessness. This is God's way, so that no flesh may ever glory in His presence.

This however does not mean that we do nothing, for God does not want us to be reduced to a state of inactivity. That is the other extreme of error. God used Abraham to produce Isaac. God didn't do it all by Himself, for Isaac was not born apart from Abraham done his part. NO. But there was a difference between te birth of Ishmael and the birth of Isaac. In both cases, Abraham was the father. But in the first case, it was in dependence upon his own strength; in the second, in dependence upon the power of God. That was the difference - and what a vital difference it was!

Hope you all learnt some lessons from the above chapter. In the next issue, I would be presenting on "No confidence in the flesh" and "Dependence on the Holy Spirit" in the coming parts. I would like to take this time to thank Zac Poonen for his wonderful book "Beauty for Ashes". The above has been taken from the same book. 

I would like all my Brothers and Sisters in Christ to pray for me so that the Lord Almighty guide me, not in presenting the words from other people but also to open my mind His Holy Words and understand them and first accept those words in my life and then present those words to you all.

Your humble Brother in Christ

Jobin George

The Pathway to the Christ-Life (2) - Being Emptied - Part 2

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus

In the previous chapter, (if you want to go there, click here Part 1, I was saying about "Helping God out of a tight spot". We saw that God had promised Abraham a son, but in his desire to make God's work more easier and depended on his abilities and produced Ishmael. But God did not accept him. One thing to remember here is if our service for God originates out of any idea that we are helping God out of a tight spot, we shall only produce unacceptable Ishmaels. That service which has its roots in human energy, fleshly wisdom, human ability and natural talents (even at their very best) is totally unacceptable to God.

Continuing from where I left off...

TRUSTING GOD
Works of Faith

Our self life is so subtle and so deceitful that it can enter the very sanctuary of God and try to serve Him there. We have to watch that and put self to death even when it seeks to serve God.

God's work has to be a work of faith - that is, one that originates in man's helpless dependence upon God. So it is not a question of how effective our work is in the eyes of men or in our own eyes. The important question is whether our work is the result of the Holy Spirit's working, or our own. God is not so much interested in how much is done, as in the question whose power has energized the work. Was the work done by the power of money and intellectual ability, or by the power of the Holy Spirit? This is the real test of a spiritual work, a work of faith. In other words, God is interested in quality than in quantity. God's true work carries on today, as of old, not by human power or might, but by the power of the Holy Spirit (Zech. 4:6). We forget this truth to our own peril.

Hope you all learnt some lessons from the above chapter. In the next issue, I would be presenting on "Man's extremity - God's opportunity". I would like to take this time to thank Zac Poonen for his wonderful book "Beauty for Ashes". The above has been taken from the same book. 

I would like all my Brothers and Sisters in Christ to pray for me so that the Lord Almighty guide me, not in presenting the words from other people but also to open my mind His Holy Words and understand them and first accept those words in my life and then present those words to you all.

Your humble Brother in Christ

Jobin George

The Pathway to the Christ-Life (2) - Being Emptied - Part 1

In the introduction, I mentioned that we would be learning a few lessons from the life of Abraham. We would learn what it means to Trust in God and what it means to Worship Him. 

TRUSTING GOD

Abraham had to learn that trusting God meant not merely intellectual belief, but also being emptied of self-sufficiency and self-dependence.

In Genesis 15 (where the word "believe" occurs n verse 6), the paragraph begins with the words, "After these things..."(v. 1). If we look int the previous chapter, to which the phrase refers, indicates that the time was of great triumph in Abraham's life. With 318 untrained servants, he had gone out and defeated the armies of four kings. And then at the end of all that, if we read further, we see that had conducted himself so nobly before the king of Sodom, refusing to take any reward for his efforts. God had helped him marvelously on both these occasions. Now, in the hour of this triumph, it was so easy for Abraham to feel self-sufficient.

At such a time, God spoke to Abraham and told him that he was going to have a son. And not only that, but God also said that through that son would come a seed that would be like the stars of the heaven for number. It looked almost impossible, but Abraham believed the Lord (Gen. 15:6). The Hebrew word translated "believe" here is "aman" which is the word we use at the end of our prayers: "Amen". It means, "It shall be so". When God told Abraham that he was going to have a son, he replied with an "Amen", meaning in essence, "Lord, I don't know how this is going to take place. But since You have said it, I believe it shall be so."

God's promise looked difficult of fulfillment because Sarah was barren. Of course, Abraham himself was still fertile. So there was some hope. In other words, the promise was not exactly impossible, but certainly difficult.

Helping God out of a tight spot

After Abraham heard God's promise, he must have reasoned with himself and said, "Well, I suppose, I should help God out in this situation, since Sarah is barren". And so he readily accepted Sarah's suggestion to unite with Hagar her maid. He sincerely desired to help God. He felt that God was in a tight spot, having made a promise that could not, humanly speaking, be fulfilled. And so, to save God out of this awkward situation, Abraham united with Hagar and produced Ishmael! But God rejected Ishmael as unacceptable, for he was the product of man's self-effort.

Today, so much of our motivation for Christian work in our day arises out of the same reasoning that Abraham had. Many believers are led to believe that God is depending on their efforts and that if they let Him down, His purposes will not be fulfilled! Things apparently have not worked out as God planned and as a result He is in a tight spot now! Some exhortations to Christian service gives us the impression that the Almighty is now at His wit's end and is desperately in need of our help!

Of course God uses human agency for the outworking of His purposes. He has voluntarily accepted this limitation because He wants us to have the privilege of cooperating with Him in His work. But that does not mean that if we disobey Him, His work will remain undone. We should understand that He is a Sovereign God. There is certainly a work for Jesus that wee can do; but if we don't do it, He will just pass us by and get someone else to do the job - and we shall miss the privilege of being God's co-workers.

We need to realize this fact that God can carry on His work very well without our help. If our service for God originates out of any idea that we are helping God out of  a tight spot, we shall only produce unacceptable Ishmaels. That service which has its roots in human energy, fleshly wisdom, human ability and natural talents (even at their very best) is totally unacceptable to God. Ishmael may be smart and impressive and we might even cry out to God just like Abraham did, "Oh that Ishmael might live before Thee" (Gen. 17:18). But God's answer to our Ishmael is "No. He was born through your strength, Abraham. So I cannot accept Him, however good he may be".

And so it is with the service that originates from ourselves. God did not accept it then, and He certainly will not accept it today! If there is any human explanation for our Christian service - be it be merely the result of excellent theological training that our sharp minds have brought together, or made possible because we have access to enough finances to support ourselves in the Christian work - then however impressive our work may appear in the eyes of men, it will be burnt up in the day of reckoning as wood, hay and straw. That day will reveal the multitude of "Ishmaels" produced by well meaning Christians, who were never emptied of their self-sufficiency. 

The only work that will abide for eternity is that which is produced in humble dependence upon the power of God's Holy Spirit. May God help us to learn that lesson now, instead of having regrets at Christ's judgement seat.

Hope you all learnt some lessons from the above chapter. In the next issue, I would be presenting on "Works of faith" and "Man's extremity - God's opportunity". I would like to take this time to thank Zac Poonen for his wonderful book "Beauty for Ashes". The above has been taken from the same book. 

I would like all my Brothers and Sisters in Christ to pray for me so that the Lord Almighty guide me, not in presenting the words from other people but also to open my mind His Holy Words and understand them and first accept those words in my life and then present those words to you all.

Your humble Brother in Christ

Jobin George

The Pathway to the Christ Life (2) - Being Emptied

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

If you follow my previous topics, my main focus was on being broken and the person depicted was Jacob. We learnt many from Jacob. But the way of the cross involves not only being broken but also being emptied.

"It is no longer I", said Paul. He had allowed himself to be emptied of the "I", so that Christ might live and rule in him. Even Jesus emptied Himself when He came down from the Throne of God Almighty to the awful depths of the cross (Phil. 2:5-8). The cross will mean the same in our lives as it did to Jesus and Paul.

In the current series of "Being Broken", we shall look to the life of Abraham - Father of the Believers, to see what it means to be emptied. In James 2:23, Abraham is called "the father of God". He was a type of those who, in the New Testament age, would be called the friends of God. Jesus told His disciples, just before He went to the cross, "You are My friends if you obey Me (as Abraham did). I no longer call you slaves, for a master does not confide in His slaves; now you are My friends, proved by the fact that I have told you everything the Father told Me" (John 15:14,15).

In the New Testament, God does not call us just to be His slaves, but to be also His friends -best of friends. Friends who enter into secret counsels and hidden mysteries of His Word. Abraham was such a friend. God revealed His secrets to him (Gen. 18:17-19).

Abraham was mightily blessed by God, and we are told that "all who trust in Christ (can) share the same blessing Abraham received" (Gal. 3:9). But what was the blessing with which God blessed Abraham? God's promise to Abraham was, "I will bless you" (Gen. 12:2). We saw in the previous series what it means to be blessed of God. But God's promise to Abraham did not end with "I will bless you". He went on to say,"...and you will be a blessing to others." This was God's full purpose for Abraham and is His purpose for us today. We are not only to be blessed but also to be channels through which that blessing is communicated to others.

Galatians 3:14 makes it clear that the blessing of Abraham for us today is connected with the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the One Who communicates the abundant life of Christ to us and then ministers that same life through us to others.

In James 2:21-23, where Abraham is called God's friend, two incidents from Abraham's life are mentioned:

(i) His believing God when God told him that he would have a son (v. 23 referring to Gen. 15:6)

(ii) His offering up Isaac when God asked him to (v. 21 referring to Gen. 22)

These two incidents are brought together in James when Abraham is referred to as being "God's friend". These two chapters in Genesis describe two important periods in Abraham's life. Moreover, in these two important chapters we find the first occurrences in the Bible of two important words - "believe" (Gen. 15:6) and "worship" (Gen. 22:5).

All Scripture is inspired by God, hence there is obviously a significance attached to the first time occurrence of an important word in the Scripture. These two passages of Scripture therefore will have much to teach us concerning the true meanings of faith and worship.

And these are the two lessons that Abraham had to learn - what it meant to believe God and what it meant to worship Him. Both of these are possibly only as we accept the cross as the instrument of our self-emptying.

With this introduction, I now start a new series. Hopefully, I will be able to complete it within a month's time. Hope you all would learn the lessons that Abraham learnt and be blessed of God and be a blessing unto others. 

Please do keep me, a sinful servant of Christ in your prayers as I type down the lessons.

Your brother in Christ

Jobin

The above extract has been taken from the book "Beauty for Ashes" by Zac Poonen.