Episodes
-
The reason why so few of us actually experience the benefits of the new covenant, is because we are not walking in the way that God has provided. We break the covenant of light and life. We go outside of the boundaries of this covenant with our minds, our hearts, our desires, plans, and deeds. We transgress the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the law of living faith, and so experience little of the blessings and benefits that are only found in the covenant.
-
On the one hand, walking in Christ (the Way) involves a continual detecting and denying the motions, movements, desires, stirrings, lusts, passions, of one nature, so that it is given no place to live and grow and reign in us; and on the other hand, it involves a continual detecting, following, submitting, obeying, loving, and embracing the appearing of the Seed or grace of Christ in us, so that it finds good soil and produces its own increase, 30, 60, or 100 fold.
-
Missing episodes?
-
There is a Seed of new life given to man, but there is also a new living WAY, created by God, opened by Jesus Christ, taught by the Spirit, whereby man can be changed by the life of that Seed, and so become something other than what he is. Christianity is a new life that is experienced by walking in a new and living way.
-
Following Christ means following Him OUT of something. It is not following Him aimlessly, wandering here and there. No, following Christ involves a very specific WAY, a very specific journey. In the beginning, man fell OUT of something, and he also fell INTO something. And it is for this reason that following Christ involves a very specific exodus, a following Christ OUT of what man fell into, in the new and living way that He has opened for us.
-
Grace has a seed in man, a seed that is sown in the heart by the One who is “full of grace and truth.” And when our will unites to the teaching and working of grace, it then finds a place to grow, it gains power in us, gains inertia, finds a home in our hearts and minds, and its power increases until it “reigns through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
-
Grace doesn’t come to man like an enormous army with banners, immediately destroying all resistance in its path. No, the gift of grace is like a King that God sets in the midst of His enemies (Psa. 110). He anoints His king, sets him in the land of our heart, and then gives everyone who feels the plague of his own heart the opportunity to join him in the day of His power. This is how grace is received, and how grace comes to have power over nature.
-
What is that gospel of grace? It is the truth, the reality, the miracle, that God has provided such a power, a living seed or gift of His own light, life, or Spirit, that can change man’s condition, and change man’s eternity, by changing his nature. It is a gift of the life of God that, when not resisted, can effectively bring about the birth, and growth, and the reign of the righteous life of God in the soul of man.
-
We cannot throw off the law until we put off the nature that is condemned by the law. We cannot say that we are dead to the law until we are dead to the sin that is condemned by the law. So long as we are living in the flesh, finding our life and heart and home in the flesh, then we are still bound to the condemnation that corresponds to the flesh.
-
Law didn’t start with Moses. Law started with God, and it started as something good, perfect, and wonderful. Before the fall, God’s life and nature WAS the law that governed all created things. I’m not talking about written or spoken rules or commandments. I mean the very life of God—who He was, how He was, what He was, His very nature, life, and light—this was a living truth or reality that never changed, and that acted upon all of His creation, bringing it into a perfect conformity to Himself, a living state of glory.
-
The gospel comes in power, and that power begins with light. And it is because we do not love this light and turn at its rebukes, it is because we make excuses to follow our own will, and justify ourselves against our own secret convictions, that we know so little of its power. In this way we crush the mustard seed when it is just beginning to sprout. We are unfaithful with little, and so rarely experience more.
-
Almost every Christian is quick to say that their belief in the gospel will save them when they die. But why are we so sure that God will save us in the future, if we are refusing to let Him save us from our sin and pride and lust, RIGHT NOW? I mean, why should we expect God to save us in the next life, if we are not letting Him save us in this one?
-
The message of the gospel can be described in words and believed as words; but the thing described by these words is an experience of power. Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the POWER of God.” What do you really know about the “effectual working” of this powerful gospel? Has the gospel changed your heart, cleansed your soul, given you a new Spirit, with new desires, new understanding, and a new will? Is it restoring in you the image and likeness of God that man lost in the beginning?
-
It is because the EXPERIENCE of inward transformation is so foreign to the Christianity of our day, that so many people become confused and discouraged when following Christ quickly leads them into the wilderness. I mentioned last time that the Spirit of God leads man somewhere that he generally does not want to go, and therefore many do not stay close to Him. What I meant was that, contrary to our desires and our expectations, the Lord leads all true followers into the wilderness, where they are made to see and feel what is really in their heart, and given an opportunity to surrender every bit of self and sin to the cross.
-
On the one hand, man finds in himself an incredible force of deceptive desire arising from his flesh and aiming at the world. But he ALSO finds in himself the stirring, moving, convicting, and calling of another desire or will that comes from a very different source. And just as walking in the flesh means following and obeying the will of the flesh that comes from self and does all for self; so walking in the Spirit means following and obeying the will of the Spirit, that comes from God and does all for God.
-
Spiritual growth is indeed a work of the Spirit, but there are many ways that we can work against the Spirit, and perhaps the most common have to do with the HUNDREDS of “little ways” that our heart or will does not humbly and sincerely submit to and obey the measure of spiritual understanding that we already have. I mean, the various ways that our obedience does not keep pace with our knowledge.
-
As strange as it sounds, one of the greatest hindrances to truly knowing the Lord can be our familiarity with biblical words and spiritual concepts. There was a time when the Lord had to show me that, though I was very acquainted with scriptural words, I was a stranger to the spiritual realities that these words described or pointed to.
-
There are only TWO BIRTHS in view in the whole reality of what is called predestination. And when men have not seen and felt these two births in themselves, then they always base the doctrine of predestination on something else. But there has always been only one birth that is rejected or reprobate, which is the first birth, the life or nature of the fallen fleshly man, who turned from and died to the life of God. And there has always been only one birth that is chosen or accepted, which is the new birth, or the birth of Christ’s life in the soul.
-
I’d like to ask you to stop for a minute and consider why it sounds so strange to you that God can overcome His enemies in man, and establish His kingdom of righteousness in the heart? I mean, what is the ground of your argument? Is it only that you haven’t yet experienced it in yourself? Is this a good reason not to believe in the possibility? I am not at all wanting to offend you, but I am wanting to expose in you the same thing that I have seen in myself, namely, an ugly desire for sinlessness to be impossible, so that the bar can stay low, and that I can justify and comfort myself in my present condition.
-
Scripture seems to clearly show that every man is offered a gift, measure or seed of light or grace in their soul, that testifies for God, testifies against all sin, worldliness, flesh, and evil, and invites them to be reconciled to God through the power and merit of Jesus Christ. I don't believe this is something that comes only to certain people from without, but rather something that (at times) testifies in all people from within, and is (like in the parables) a hidden treasure in a field, a lost pearl, or a seed sown and made available on every kind of soil, even on the hard road that doesn’t receive it.
-
The daily cross of Christ is the power of God made manifest in you to expose, to judge and to remove all that is fallen from His glory. It is not just self-denial, or ceasing to do evil. It is denial of self AND a complete subjection and resignation to the creating power, or the resurrecting power of Christ. And it is the lack of living in this way inwardly at all times before God, that keeps men and women from truly experiencing the benefit of all that Christ did outwardly for them.
- Show more
