The Highest Joy
Posted by jerrywhite on Apr 30, 2009
“The highest joy of all is to possess the Father—till there remains no shred of darkness nor cloud nor even a mist between us and His endless pure light. The highest joy is to see Him as He is, to feel all the sweetness of His being nourishing our soul, rejoined to Him in our very substance….
I saw that the only thing that blocks us from living in the rays of God’s pure light now is sin: first, our hunger for sin; then the action of sin itself; finally, the wasting starvation sin causes to our souls. For such empty darkness can never feed our souls, which were made for endless light.”
Julian of Norwich
I Promise You A Crown, p. 144
Arranged and Paraphrased by David Hazard
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If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
1 John 1:7 (ESV)
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Consciousness of our sinfulness never leaves us while we live on earth. This keeps us in the place of humility and dependence. We need the Lord Jesus who cleansed us at our conversion to continue cleansing us today. Continual fellowship with the Father is dependent on our walking habitually in the light as He is in the light. However, when there is sinful failure, which always comes with godly grief and shame afterwards, honest confession of sin to the Father is the way to appropriate the forgiveness and cleansing fully purchased by the shed blood of the Lord Jesus. Restoration from sinful stumbling can be instantaneous. Proud flesh wants to wallow in its guilt and shame and do penance of some kind to regain its place of restoration. Humble ones, however, confess with grief and repent of their sin before the Father and receive immediately His complete forgiveness and cleansing. As they return to walking habitually in the light of their Lord they are constantly cleansed from all sin—completely and forever. Life in the Lord’s light is the high place of love, joy, and peace.
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Doubt Prevents
Posted by jerrywhite on Apr 27, 2009
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.
2 Peter 1:3 (ESV)
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 1:3 (ESV)
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“In our private prayers and in our public services we are forever asking God to do things that He has already done or cannot do because of our unbelief. We plead for Him to speak when He has already spoken and is at that very moment speaking. We ask Him to come when He is already present and waiting for us to recognize Him. We beg the Holy Spirit to fill us while all the time we are preventing Him by our doubts.”
A.W. Tozer
Quoted in Magnificent Prayer, p. 98
Edited by Nick Harrison
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Everything we need for living a godly life has been given to us in Christ Jesus. We need not look anywhere else but Him. Every spiritual blessing in heavenly places has been given to us as His children. Absolutely nothing has been withheld. These “every spiritual blessing” are ours this moment because of our oneness with the Lord Jesus. All the life in the Vine is available for the branch to draw upon. All the blessings in our Lord are available for us to draw upon through quiet faith. But we must trust Him with no doubting (James 1:6). This is how His great and precious promises become ours in experience. It is impossible for Him to lie. You can believe His promises and trust His faithfulness to keep them. Take His Scriptural promises before Heaven’s Throne and confess with thankfulness that you trust Him to keep His Word. The Lord Jesus will be pleased and honored.
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Waning Love
Posted by jerrywhite on Apr 23, 2009
“Intimacy with God is a fragile thing that must be carefully guarded.
M. Basilea Schlink tells of her own experience of waning love:
‘I came to see that my relationship to my Lord Jesus Christ, with the passing years had eroded away, something like a marriage gone humdrum. What did I do when I found a little pocket of spare time, on Sunday or a holiday? I couldn’t wait to get together with other people—people I liked, people with whom I had something in common—so that we could share ideas and experiences. Or I read a stimulating book. Or I went out to enjoy nature. I even plunged further into my work, doing things that I normally didn’t have time for. But to go to Jesus—to give Him first claim on my spare time, that I did not do’ ”
J. Oswald Sanders
Enjoying Intimacy With God, p.43
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I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.
Revelation 2:4-5 (ESV)
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The Lord Jesus wants us to love Him— to love Him passionately with our whole heart. This is not because He needs our love because He does not. He is perfectly fulfilled in the love and joy of the Trinity. However, His great love for us causes Him to desire that we be most fulfilled, and He knows that loving Him supremely and desiring His nearness brings us the deepest fulfillment, peace, and joy possible.
Everything in our world is against intimacy with Christ. Our own flesh resists the discipline required for closeness with the Lord Jesus. The devil’s emissaries war against us to prevent us drawing near to God. If the evil one cannot stop us with the snare of sin then he will use good and respectable things to hinder us.
Love and thirst are powerful motivations. The young lover longs to be with the beloved and will seek every opportunity to make it happen. Thirst compels one to seek for what will quench its longing until it is found. The wonder of our Lord’s grace is that we can ask Him to give us strong thirst for Him and to strengthen our love for Him—and He will. He meets us where we are just for the asking. If we draw near, He will draw near.
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Holy Spirit Required
Posted by jerrywhite on Apr 20, 2009
“The significance of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus extends to his followers in all of the little and the big things of their existences. The Spirit that helped Jesus overcome temptations, that strengthened him in weakness, that aided him in the hard job of taking on himself the hurts of the hurting, that infused him with a power to accomplish the impossible, that enabled him to stay with and complete the task God had given him to do, that brought him through death and into resurrection, is the Spirit that the resurrected Jesus has freely and lavishly (note the force of the verb in Acts 2:33) given to those who would be his disciples today!”
Gerald F. Hawthorne
The Presence & The Power, p. 242
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The conception of Jesus in Mary’s womb was by the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus lived His life in the power of the Holy Spirit. He ministered for three years under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. He taught His Father’s truth through the Holy Spirit. He was resurrected and taken to the right hand of the Father by the Holy Spirit. Nothing about His life can be explained apart from the Holy Spirit. He was utterly dependent upon the Spirit for everything in His life and ministry. Without the Spirit He was helpless to do the Father’s will. In the same way He says to His followers, for apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5, ESV). Our need for the Holy Spirit is the same as the Son of Man’s. As a man He knew His desperate need for the Holy Spirit, so we also must know our desperate need. As the Father gave the Holy Spirit for His beloved Son’s life and ministry so He gave the Holy Spirit for us as well. If we know our utter need for His fullness we can receive Him in child-like faith because our Father delights to lavish His fullness upon us—just for the asking (Luke 11:13). It is as though He says, “Believe, my child, believe”.
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Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:24 (ESV)
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Reverent Fear
Posted by jerrywhite on Apr 16, 2009
“What then is filial fear? It is that indefinable mixture of reverence, fear, pleasure, joy, and awe which fills our hearts when we realize who God is and what he has done for us. It is a love for God which is so great that we would be ashamed to do anything which would displease or grieve him, and makes us happiest when we are doing his will.”
Sinclair B. Ferguson
Grow In Grace, p. 36
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So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.
Acts 9:31 (ESV)
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In our American culture of casualness, familiarity, and lack of respect for authority the danger exists of treating the Lord the same way. [Moses] take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground (Exodus 3:5 ESV). The Lord taught His people situation by situation that they must revere Him profoundly and approach Him as holy. Moses could not enter the promised land because he struck the rock twice instead of speaking to it as the Lord commanded, and the Lord said, Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them (Numbers 20:12, ESV).
Nowhere in Scripture does it teach that God’s children should approach Him with servile fear. Craven or cowardly fear must never be a Christian’s attitude before the Lord. We come before the Lord boldly because of what He has done in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and because He is our dear loving Heavenly Father. But we should always approach Him, whether privately or in church, with utmost reverence, filial fear, pleasure, joy, awe and devotion. The verse above reveals that the early church had comfort in the Holy Spirit and the fear of the Lord. Reverent love for the Lord Jesus wants never to displease Him because it feels a deep sense of accountability to Him.
Holy Father, please teach us to live before You always with reverent fear.
Jesus did.
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