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Posted: 10/05/2010 at 6:02pm
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BELIEVING IS BEING
By Ron McGatlin
Have you ever wondered why true spiritual growth into the fullness of the stature of Christ is so slow and sporadic that is seems non-existent in many who seek to be followers of Christ?
Seeking solutions in our human mentality frequently leads to complicated weighing and balancing of many concepts and potential factors. We could make a list of factors involved in not living in the stature of the fullness of Christ and then mentally measure one against the other to try to determine which are the more significant causes or reasons. Probably our list would contain many theologically related thoughts or understandings with proof-texts from the Bible. Our list may also include a number of practical life issues mostly designed to vindicate ourselves of responsibility and validate our spirituality at the level or place where it is at this time.
Often these considerations will finally rest on the unstated and mostly hidden belief that God is the problem. We might think something like, “After all, it is supposed to be all by ‘grace’ and all His responsibility to get us there, and He just has not done it yet.” In so doing, one can side-step the real issue and begin a defensive case of grace verses works, thereby completely abandoning the real issue and dumping on God the blame for our lack of the fullness-of-Christ lifestyle.
Every child of God is gifted with the most marvelous supernatural potential to WORK – to work the works of God. Most Christians, including many if not most leaders, are ignorant of their God-given potential to work the works of God, and walk in the stature of the fullness of Christ Jesus. We lift up in our minds that Christ Jesus is vastly different from redeemed mankind. We may reason, “If Jesus were here, He would do marvelous supernatural works that would fix all things, and in some way cause us to mature spiritually.” Let us remember that Jesus could do very little in a city of unbelieving people. Selah (Mat 13:58).
WAKE UP! Wake up and hear the word of God. When God speaks it is simple and yet profound, without complication and filled with power. By the Spirit it is easily understood and life changing.
What is God saying about working the works of God?
The disciples asked Jesus this question and His answer is probably one of the most trivialized oracles of God among today’s Christians. Failing to recognize the potential of His answer has led masses of seekers off the road of truth into the swamp of religious muddled fallacies of greasy grace and complacency of irresponsibility. This has allowed the enemy to take the land – stealing, killing, and destroying the potential of the stature of the fullness of Christ in His people, thus greatly hindering the works of God through His people.
There is a work that every disciple MUST do. This work will not be done for the disciple by Christ Jesus. It is the full responsibility of the follower of Christ.
John 6:28-29: Then they said to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent."
This may be a new thought to many of us. Our part is to work to believe in Christ Jesus. We may have never considered that believing is a work for us to do.
May we now open our spiritual eyes and ears, that God by His Spirit may reveal to us the reality of working to believe in Jesus, and the full potential that believing releases in us to flow the works of God into the world. Believing in the fullness of Christ Jesus does not just happen to us. We are not going to be walking about in the foolishness of natural thinking and have believing suddenly drop into us. We are not going to be listening to the foolishness of religious sermons that make us feel good where we are without changing, and suddenly have believing in the fullness of Christ Jesus and all He has brought to us through the Holy Spirit just drop into our hearts.
Yes, we may come to believe in Jesus as our savior to get us to heaven when we die, and we may believe that our sins are paid for, but we will not believe that Christ Jesus will raise the dead, miraculously heal the sick, and transform our lives, homes, tribes, cities, and nations with His love and power through us. We will not believe that maturing into the stature of the fullness of Christ is for us today, because Christ Jesus lives in us by the Holy Spirit.
I get sick inside and my heart breaks from hearing Christians speaking their false belief that they do not have the potential now of the stature of the fullness of Christ. They look around and say, I do not see anyone living in the stature of the fullness of Christ. HEAR THIS! What comes first the seeing of it in natural life, or the believing of it in the spiritual realm? Will we receive from God what we DO NOT BELIEVE? If we believe it is only available some day in the future, will we have it now? Is it not true that all things are in Christ Jesus? It is true that in Him all things consist and are reconciled. (Col 1:17-20).
So the foolish one says, “Well I just do not believe that this is what the Bible says,” but never gives their life into reading the Bible on their own and seeking the light from the Holy Spirit. So they never DO THE WORK OF BELIEVING. Yes, the work of believing is investing your life in seeking the truth from the written word, by the Holy Spirit. The work of believing involves conscious effort on the disciple’s part to get rid of the limiting religious fallacious teachings and seek in total seriousness and commitment to know Christ Jesus and hear clearly the word of the Father.
Pray until God sends the Holy Spirit and ministering spirits to help you truly receive the truth of the words of God. The work of believing in Jesus involves following Him, which is following His word and His way. Go back to reading the Bible again while prayerfully crying out to God to cleanse you of previous religious beliefs. Seek to read it for what it says by the Spirit, and not what you have been taught it means by religious teachers.
We must be baptized in the Spirit to discern truth. Seeking the fullness of the Spirit and saturating our lives in Him is a part of the work of believing in Christ Jesus. Seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness is part of the work of believing in Christ Jesus. Find those forerunners who are moving ahead in the Spirit, moving into the stature of the fullness of Christ, and entering into the kingdom of God. Learn from those who will only move you toward Christ and the gospel of the kingdom, and not toward their thing or any system apart from the system of the kingdom of God.
Leaving those things which are behind, let us move with all diligence and persistence into the realm of the Spirit and the word until we fall in love again with the Lord and His word. An appetite develops for the things we eat regularly.
Don’t just make room in your life for fellowship with Him and His word. Instead let His life become your entire life, and He will make room for you in season.
He will make us doers of the works of God. We will work the works of God as they really are, and not as we had imagined them in our vain imaginations. The work of believing involves a redeemed imagination. We are not talking about a fantasy imagination but a God-given spiritual imaging or envisioning process within, in which God can speak to us directly and clearly. God can show us things to come on our imaging screen in our spirits so that we can pray for them to come into being in the natural, and we will believe because God has said by His holy word. In His natural body, Jesus only did what he saw the Father doing by the Holy Spirit. He will do the same in us today.
John 5:19-21: Then Jesus answered and said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.”
John 14:12: "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.”
Keep on pursuing love. It never fails
and His kingdom never ends.
Ron McGatlin
archive.openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net
Edited by Moderator on 10/07/2010 at 4:30pm
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Topic: BELIEVING IS BEING
