Ephesians 3:16-18 –
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be
strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man. That Christ
may dwell in your hearts through faith: that you, being rooted and grounded in
love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and
length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge,
that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
How many times have we not listened to the still small voice
only to have regretted that we did not recognize it as from God? It is important to know the Shepherd and be
known by Him. In Matthew 7:23, Jesus
says that many will say that they did this and that in His name, He will say: I
never knew you, depart from Me you who practice lawlessness!
What is this lawlessness that they are practicing even while
using His name to prophesy, cast out demons, and do wonders? John 14:15- 17: If you love Me, keep My
commandments. And I will pray the
Father; and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the
Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor
knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you….vs 21:
He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me and will be
loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.
This is all very important.
What do we know about these commandments? They are summed up Jesus says as love to God
and love to man. One day as I was
thinking on these things, I asked God if there was a commandment that I was
breaking. Very quickly I heard Him say, “You
are committing adultery.” Wow! I was somewhat taken aback by that word. I knew that there was no other man in my
life! I asked God what He meant. He said I was so involved in other things
that I didn’t spend enough time with Overton.
Now, I could understand. My
purpose for sharing this is to help us understand how we might be breaking the
law of love. We may have to go a little
deeper. Love to God and love to man are
wrapped up together. He says that if we
have done it to anyone (good things or bad things) we have done it unto
Him.
The Beatitudes were another way of expressing the law. It was a way of describing how it might look
if we practiced keeping His law from Christ's perspective. It becomes a visual aid for us. I do not want to be one of those who
practices lawlessness. What we practice,
we perfect. Law keeping is about
relationship to God and man. He says
that He will write the laws in our hearts and minds. This is an internal work. So, unless we have this internal experience,
we can be doing all the correct things, but it is not based in love and
relationship.
God’s sheep hear and know His voice. They understand relationship living. I wonder sometimes if the real problem with
lawlessness is that they have got it backwards.
They start with the doing of stuff, but forget the being in
relationship. They are like the
unfaithful steward that abuses the messengers and Son. They have no respect for the relationship or
the work. They are trying to build up
the Kingdom while destroying the temple (theirs and others). Incongruent!
Have you ever heard the Lord speak to you, and it made no
sense from the human perspective? No
sane person would do what He is directing you to do. You can only be obedient to that message if
you know His voice. Sometimes God tells
us to offer up our Isaac (our life) in some way. Unless you know the voice of God, you are not
likely to be obedient. You will question
yourself into disobedience.
The ripening of the fruit in the wheat and tares parable speaks
volumes to us. There is the waiting time
for the fruit to ripen. By our fruit, we
are known. This waiting time has a
rather large message…the filling up of the cup of iniquity. Do you see the patience of God while He waits
for all these things to ripen? For
instance, Darwin
taught a lie. It will not be until the
Lord says that it is finished...he that is righteous, let him be righteous
still and he that is filthy let him be filthy still…that the full impact of
Darwin’s lie can be seen. When heaven
and earth sees what a disaster that lie has caused, then is God both “just and
the justifier” in judgment. (Romans). There is much
the scripture says about false prophets and teachers. Again, the fruit in those people and the
people they mislead has to come to fruition to see the full extent of
damage. This damage is lawlessness. It creates a broken relationship between God
and His people. It creates a people who
want to ascend and take God’s throne.
We are all busy doing things. Let us go back to the point of conviction and
conversion and ask God if we are being lawless people. What are we putting before Him? How are we arguing our way out of obedience
to that still small voice? Are we calling
His goodness in talking to us something evil?
We must be in the Word of God so that we will know truth for it is the
standard by which we measure all things and by which we are set free. Freedom is a fruit of God.
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