God Outside Your Box

Isaiah 55:8-9
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

God Outside Your Box

Don’t we all tend to like to make nice tidy boxes that we can nicely put God within the realms of our understanding, summations and definitions. Wouldn’t we all feel so much more in control if we knew that in this situation God was going to do this and in that one He would do that, but we are in God’s box, He is not in ours. Despite all of our theologies we cannot harness God. He defies our test tubes and analysis. Yes, there are things that we do know about Him. We do know that He is love, justice and holiness. We see so many of His attributes revealed in His Word and know that these wonderful attributes are what He acts out of. We know His Word is that which we can depend upon and which He will fulfill. Even though He is the same yesterday, today and forever, we can never limit Him to our understanding or fully grasp what there is to know about Him. If our God has limitations it is only because He has placed them upon Himself for our benefit and out of love for us.
Isn’t it ironic that God has given us a free will? Through that free will we have rebelled and sinned against Him. We have often denied Him, forsaken Him and tried Him. Yet when we see the hurt, destruction and death that our sin brings upon the earth we want to turn and blame God for allowing this to happen. We say He is not doing anything about it and yet He has already done it through His Son Jesus Christ. He has made a way, but it is still our choice and choosing that leads us out of the path of sin and destruction. Even though we are Christians and have made the choice for Him it doesn’t negate the effects that this sin-laden world can have on our lives. We can still experience its calamities and trudges just like everyone else, because in this body we are still part of this fallen race.
While in this body we still experience the limitations of our humanity, but what is different about us is that within our spirits we also experience an unlimited God. We often struggle with the fact that God doesn’t seem to act in our behalf the way we often think that He should have or that we prayed that He would. Does that make God in effectual or does it just mean that God is working in ways that we don’t understand and fully comprehend? Is God truly indifferent to our needs and cries or is there something of a higher order at work beyond what we see, feel and experience? How many times have we looked back in our experience or that of others to see that the tragedy, failure or the calamity that we felt God failed us in was the very thing that shaped our lives? It may have been the very thing that led us into the destiny and calling of what He had called us to be? This is why we mustn’t judge God prematurely when we don’t think things are happening according to our understanding and our ways. Often God is at work outside of the box of our understanding moving in ways that are infinitely higher than our immediate cognizance. What God asks of us is that we trust Him. Even when we don’t understand His hand we must trust His heart. God is working all things after the counsel of His divine will and purpose. Life will have its tragic and painful moments. Know that God is not insensitive to those places of our deepest hurts, but those are sometimes the birthplaces of our greatest miracles and triumphs. It is not necessary that we always understand what God is doing or why He does or does not move in the way that we pray. We must not make the mistake of trying to limit God to our understanding. He sees far beyond all that we could ask or think.
We often wrestle with why bad things happen to good or innocent people. Often it has do to the principles that operate in a world where sin has been sown. Just as God rains upon the just and the unjust, so sin and tragedy happen to both as well. What we are learning is that we don’t live according to the principles of this world, but in our spirit and out of our spirit we are living according to principles of the kingdom of God and His dominion. In that place we trust in His Lordship and His sovereignty, not always according to our understanding, but according to our faith. Can you still trust God even when you don’t understand and He doesn’t fit within your box?

Blessings,
#kent

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Satan Beneath Your Feet

Genesis 3:15
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Satan Beneath Your Feet

This scripture has far more weight and meaning than just Eve’s immediate offspring. God was speaking a prophetic word. When God created Adam in the likeness of Himself, then the seed that the Word gives reference to would be that which was in the image of God. We see now the fulfillment of this passage going forth as the woman spoken of here is the Church and her seed are the sons and daughters of the most high. We might ask the question, “Why is the serpent’s head bruised under the heel of the woman’s seed?”
Satan, represented in that serpent, has always been the thorn in the side of God’s people and the bruising of the heel. We see him spoken of as the prince of the power of the air in Ephesians 2:2 and “the God of this world” in 2 Corinthians 4:4. Adam was originally the god of this world. It was to him and his offspring dominion was given. Genesis 1:27-28 states, ” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.””
When Adam and Eve made the choice to sin against God they relinquished that authority to satan by exercising their free will. As a result the people of God, and even all of creation, have felt the bruising of our heel and more by satan’s tyrannical rule.
It took the blood shed by the innocent Lamb of God, to take back that authority and dominion that satan has held. As a man without sin and whose life satan took unjustly, Christ Jesus rose the third day the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Psalms 68:28-21 declares, “When you ascended on high, you led captives in your train you received gifts from men, even from the rebellious— that you, O LORD God, might dwell there.
“Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. Selah 20 Our God is a God who saves; from the Sovereign LORD comes escape from death. 21 Surely God will crush the heads of his enemies, the hairy crowns of those who go on in their sins. (Psalms 68:19-21)” Then Hebrews brings forth the fulfillment of this scripture in Ephesians 4:7-13, “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8This is why it[a] says: “When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men.” 9(What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 11It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Hebrews 10:11-14 goes on to say “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. 13Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, 14because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” That day Christ put the perfection of God back into our hearts and restored the dominion and authority lost. He has set down at the right hand of the Father and now it is the responsibility of the Church to take up that mantle of authority and victory left for us in Christ through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. We have the same mandate that Joshua gave to people of Israel as they entered the promise land in Joshua 1:3, ” Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.”
Our inheritance, our dominion and authority is that which we lost in the garden with the first Adam, but that which has and is now being restored is that which we have regained through the last Adam, Jesus Christ. We are the feet of Christ and the enemy is our footstool. How many believe that Christ is ready to put His feet up? Romans 8:37 declares, ” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
Revelations 12:10-12 reveals our overcoming source and power to prevail, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night has been hurled down. 11They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.
12Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.” Your victory and dominion is in the word of your testimony, the authority of the Word of God in you and through you, and the blood of the Lamb which has already accomplished for us everything that pertains to life and godliness. Satan is a defeated foe and it is time to storm the gates of hell for they shall not prevail against us. ” And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [be] with you. Amen. (Romans 16:20)”

Blessings,
#kent

Lean on Me

Lean on Me

1 Kings 18:21

Now, behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, [even] upon Egypt, on which if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so [is] Pharaoh king of Egypt unto all that trust on him. 

Through the exodus of Israel out of Egypt we can easily see the type and parallel of our spiritual deliverance out of the bondage of sin and the world.  We see how the Passover lamb and the blood applied upon the door post of Israelite homes was a type of the blood of Christ being applied to the doors post of our hearts when we trusted in Him and His blood to take away our sins.   We saw the Red Sea as a type of our baptism into Christ.  As we walk out on the other side of Egypt into a new life, we find ourselves there in the wilderness, our supply and dependence is no longer in Egypt and Pharaoh, but in God alone.  Pharaoh was that type of the god of this world, satan, who does everything he can to hinder and prevent our deliverance and salvation, but God is greater and the things satan intends for evil, God can turn to good.  Satan continues to come to us, as he did to Jesus in the wilderness, seeking to bring us again into bondage, submission and reliance on him.  

This parallel and type continues to carry through in our scripture for today.  It is interesting that the Word refers to the world and satan a bruised reed.  It reminds me of Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. ”  These were the words that God spoke to satan after the fall in the Garden of Eden.  The woman is a type of the Church with her seed bruising the head of satan and satan bruising the heel of her seed.   Romans 16:20 says, “And the God of peace shallbruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [be] with you. Amen.”  From this we can see that we are the seed of the woman and through Christ, satan is bruised beneath our feet.  So why would we want to trust again in this “bruised reed”?   Why do we want to put our dependence in a defeated foe and in that which is passing away?   The Lord is warning us not to lean on this bruise reed, because as surely as we put our trust back in the natural things of this world it will end up piercing through our hand.  One of the greatest pitfalls and the place where Israel grieved God the most is when they were being tried and tested, they wanted to go back to Egypt.  It is an ironic thing that people would rather go back and live in bondage and slavery rather than have to exercise faith in what they can’t see and what is not familiar to them.  

Recently we talked to a soldier that just returned from Iraq.  He was relating to us that the mentality of many of the people is they would rather have Sadam back than to have freedom and liberty from bondage and fear.  He said their reasoning was that even though Sadam was evil and did many terrible things, they knew what to expect and they were use to the way things were.  That holds true a lot with people being unwilling to let go of this world and all of the fear, bondage and slavery to sin that it brings to us.  We would often rather continue on in this natural way of life because it is all we have ever known rather than put our dependence in God.  We can’t see freedom.  It is like faith, it exist to liberate us into a higher dimension of life, but because we can’t see it and always understand and quantify it we want to lapse back into our former way of living, even if that is bondage.  

God is calling us to, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding,  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.  Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil” (Proverbs 3:5-7).  In much the same way we in America are willing to sacrifice our lives for the freedom we have come to enjoy and live in, God wants us to have that same type of commitment to our faith in Him and in His Word.  We in America enjoy the highest standard of living of anyone one in the world.  We experience freedom and riches that most of the world can only dream about.  This is a type of what we have in Christ.  It was even said of Moses that he had such a revelation of God, “Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. (Hebrews 11:26).”  When we really catch the revelation of what we have and who we are in Christ we realize that even the downside of trials and reproach is greater riches than what the world can only offer us on a temporary basis.  Let our confidence, hope and joy be found wholly in Christ and His Word that is able provide all that we need and beyond.  Let us lean wholly on Him, ‘who is able to meet all of our needs according to His riches in glory.’  

Blessings,

#kent