Archive - June, 2009

Organizing your life

June 5, 2009 • 0 Comments

From BobHamp.com

Jesus made this all-important statement in His very first sermon: “Seek first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” “These things”, that he refers to, that will be added to you are the concerns of life; our family, our finances, the details of our existence. “These things” will be taken care of if we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Through the filters, we read this. Try hard to do what God says and He will reward you with the things of life. Be good and your life will work out the way you want. This most common misconception of religion leads many to great disappointment, disillusionment and even resentment towards God. It even keeps many away from Him.

Read again, “Seek first the Kingdom of God…” You see, we all have something we “seek first.” It is the thing toward which most of our time energy, attention, and even resources are directed. “Seeking first” simply refers to that which is of highest value to us, and therefore has most of our attention.

We all have some “thing” that we seek first. Whatever that thing is, it becomes the thing that organizes the rest of my life. If I seek first my marriage, everything in my life is ordered around my marriage. If I seek first financial gain, everything in my life is organized around money. Jesus is simply describing a principle of reality. Whatever I seek first organizes every other facet of my life. Now watch.

If I seek first relief from frustration, the things that frustrate me are given power to organize all the other aspects of my life. If I seek first relief from pain, my pain now becomes the organizing principle of my life. Don’t blink here… If I seek first my freedom, my desires becomes the organizing factor in my life.

Jesus was telling us if we learn to make the Kingdom of God our first pursuit, that our frustrations, our money, our pain, and even our freedom will be organized by God’s Kingdom. Seeking first the meeting of your needs will ultimately put you at the center of your life, the very thing that got the human race in trouble in the first place.

That which is flesh is flesh, that which is Spirit is confusing

June 1, 2009 • 0 Comments

From BobHamp.com

Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit (John 3:6).

Nicodemus, the one to whom Jesus spoke these words, could not have been more confused. Jesus might as well have downloaded Nic’s brain into a computer program. His head was spinning and this Rabbi was confusing him. He recognized the words, but the meaning of the words seemed just out of reach.

This distinction between spirit and flesh still challenges each of us today. As we learn to “live by the Spirit” it can be like learning to speak a foreign language, or learning to communicate with a member of the opposite sex.

Engaging God’s Spirit can cause strong emotions, but sometimes strong emotions come from our flesh, and prevent us from tuning into God. Allowing God’s Spirit to speak through us can cause a great surge in confidence, but this very confidence can become dangerous pride. Encountering God’s Spirit can result in powerful experiences. These very experiences can later become a distraction from an ongoing experience of God’s presence. Some of the things produced in us by His Spirit can be imitated without His presence, as we fall again into self-reliance.

See the trap? Measuring outward experience may not necessarily tell us anything at all about whether or not we are being moved by the Spirit. In fact, measuring by outward experience can convince us wrongly that we are living by the Spirit.

When we are dependent on and guided by the Spirit of God, it is a strange partnership between our willingness to grow in dependence and familiarity and God’s willingness to be patient and train us. God makes a move, then it is our turn. He initiates an engagement and watches to see what we do. He wants to inform us, then empower us and then demonstrate Himself through us. His goal is to get us to learn to walk out the whole process empowered by His working.

So we Hear God. Now what. We heard because He spoke. But we focus on our hearing.

“I’m pretty good at hearing God,” we think (or worse, say).

Then we proceed to tell others what we heard, and how we heard, and how cool it was. At some point we diverge from God’s goal. We think His goal is that we go now, and do what He said, regardless of whose energy we engage. God is standing back at the starting line to see how far we will run before we realize He has not moved since He spoke. Will we run ahead without Him?

Step by step Living by the Spirit starts to make sense. Well, that’s not really the right way to say it. We begin to understand. Well, that’s not really the right way to say it either. We grow in familiarity and surrender. We become less willing to take another step without Him. We become more sensitive to His impulse and the shifting of our wayward motives. We grow familiar with the “groove” of being moved by Him.

It is a maturing process. Can it be measured? Sure it can; watch for these signs: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, meekness, mercy, and self-control. If these qualities are not in you, and are not produced around you consider the source. Spirit or Flesh.

Page 3 of 3«123