THE DIVIDING LINE

THE DIVIDING LINE

                “And Peter answered Him and said, ”Lord if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” And He said, “Come!” And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became afraid and beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, “Lord, save me!” And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind stopped and those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, “You are certainly God’s Son.” Mt. 14:28-33.

                I have heard this story all of my life and I have heard many of the discussions about keeping your eyes on Jesus and not looking at the wind and the waves. And of course there is the fact that Jesus immediately stretched out His hand and took hold of Peter and that is reassuring.

                What we don’t usually hear about this story is that it represents a pivotal point between two different kinds of Christianity. There is RATIONAL Christianity and there is SPIRITUAL Christianity. There is NATURAL Christianity and there is SUPERNATURAL Christianity.

                The boat represents the RATIONAL and NATURAL Christianity while the call of Jesus to walk on the water represents the SPIRITUAL and SUPERNATURAL Christianity that Yeshua is calling us to.

                There is a big difference between believing the Bible, or living in the supernatural realm that it calls us to. In fact, many denominations have simply made a doctrine telling us that the supernatural is not for today and the gifts of the Spirit ended with the apostles. They discourage any manifestations of the gifts saying it is of the devil. And yet they encourage us to manifest the FRUIT of the Spirit, which is produced by the same Spirit that gives the GIFTS of the Spirit that they say are of the devil. Go figure.

                And so, in denying the Gifts and power of the Holy Spirit much of the church ignores the supernatural nature of the FRUIT as well, and they go on in their anger, having no peace, patience, goodness, kindness or self-control and they shrug it off saying that God will change us in the rapture and so meanwhile grace covers our sins.

                We glibly talk about a final outpouring of the Holy Spirit for a final harvest and yet we stubbornly cling to our natural, rational minds. We remain in the safety of the boat of conventional thinking with everyone else and we don’t even consider the fact that in order to receive an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we are going to have to step out of the boat, so to speak, and learn how to walk with Jesus on the water.

                The question is if we stubbornly cling to our rational and natural form of Christianity, how will we ever be prepared to embrace and walk in the supernatural?

                So if you think that I am reading more into this story of Peter’s walk on the water than is intended, then listen to Jesus words to the Pharisees when He said:

                “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me that you may have life.”

                In other words, Jesus is saying to us, “You sit in the boat studying the Word with your natural and rational minds, but you never come out to me on the water where real faith is needed. It is one thing to believe in me intellectually and quite another thing to get out of the boat and walk with Me on the water.”

                Hebrews 11:6 says: And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is the rewarder of those who seek Him.”

                So could we not also hear Jesus saying here that “without the kind of faith that comes to Me on the water, you cannot please Me, for I am the rewarder of those who step out of the boat and seek Me upon the water?”

                It is relatively easy to have a boat kind of faith. We can spend our entire lives in little Bible classes discussing the ins and outs of every text. We can get a Hebrew take on it and a Greek take on it and a contextual take on it and a cultural take on it, but until we get a supernatural take on it, we are not yet exercising the kind of faith that Yeshua is calling us to in these last days.

                Jesus set a high goal for us when He said, “Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father.” Jn. 14:12

                As far as I know this command has never been fulfilled. The apostles did great works, but they did not surpass the works of Yeshua and I believe that God has reserved these “greater works” for a final demonstration of His power in the latter times. I believe it will come when gross darkness covers the people and the world is covered with blood and fire and columns of smoke and enmeshed in chaos, persecution and war. Then God will say to those who have prepared for such a time as this: “Arise, Shine; for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you, for behold the darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon you and His glory shall be seen upon you.” Isa. 60:1, 2.

                We are never going to be equipped to handle such light as long as we keep on attributing the works of the Holy Spirit to the devil. Yes, the devil has a counterfeit, but he only counterfeits those things that are real. So if you are living for the devil and you are manifesting the gifts then you are operating in the devils power, but if you are living for Yeshua and His Word abides in you and His Holy Spirit abides in you, then you will be manifesting the gifts of the Spirit of God.

                But we need to develop a new spiritual and supernatural mindset. Listen to what Paul said to the Corinthians:

                 “And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. “ 1Cor. 2:4, 5

                We all saw a demonstration a few days ago of how horribly off track a person can get from the truth by relying on the natural and rational mind, while being void of the Spirit. By his words he denied the Word of God, the Son of God and the Spirit of God and then he set about to shame and destroy the personal testimonies of God’s saints, which people you are my friends. And in a way, that encounter was a gift from God for indeed, we may soon face persecution like this where our every word is twisted, our motives maligned and our testimony shredded and we need to learn how to base our lives on God’s opinions and not the opinions of man. I was so proud of all of you, for you were able to detect which spirit was at work and you opposed it with your own testimonies to the truth.

                Never mind that he belittled your faith. That’s the way Satan works. But you stood your ground and we all learned something in the process. And we also saw just how evil the natural mind can be when a person denies the Spirit of God by which we comprehend the Truth as it is in Yeshua.

                Don’t let anyone intimidate you because of your walk on the water. We are new at this, but the Lord is teaching us and sometimes He sends the wind and the waves to test our faith and to strengthen it. We are meant to live a supernatural life. We are called to move beyond the natural and rational mind and to embrace the spiritual and the supernatural way of life, for as Paul said in 1 Cor. 2:12-16.

                “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we might know the things freely given to us by God, (As in spiritual gifts) which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.”

                Now, in operating in the Spiritual/supernatural, we do not abandon the rational thinking that comes with understanding the Word of God on a practical level. This is why Paul showed us the balance in 1 Cor. 14:15 when he said:

                “What is the outcome then? I shall pray with the spirit and I shall pray with the mind also; I shall sing with the spirit and I shall sing with the mind also. Otherwise if you bless in the spirit only, how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say the “Amen” at you’re giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying?” (Let those who are in the Spirit hear what Paul is saying here.)

                Yeshua is calling us to step out of the boat and to walk with Him in that place that is foolishness to the natural man. We need to learn to put our full weight upon the holding power of Yeshua. We still have our training pontoons on, but we need to grow into this spiritual/supernatural realm, for I believe that we will yet be called upon to do the works of Christ and even greater works as a final demonstration against the coming global kingdom of the antichrist.

                I have no argument against a pre-trib rapture, but many may have to rethink the timing of that event  as to its placement in end time events for Paul says in 2 Thess. 2:3, 4 ”That day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.”

                So the doctrine of imminence is not totally accurate, for these two things must happen before the rapture, which means that we will be here to see the great apostasy and the appearance of the antichrist. But that is not to say that His coming is far distant, for we are seeing the great apostasy in progress right now and we also see the global kingdom of antichrist rapidly coming into place along with all of the technology to make it possible. All of this could happen very quickly.

                So why do I bring up this subject? It is because I believe that in God’s planning of these events, He has a great harvest in mind and He is going to pour out His Spirit upon His people to do it, and as such we need to develop a new spiritual and supernatural mindset in order to accommodate the work that we will be called to do. And as for us, we stand at the dividing line and we need to decide if we are going to stay in the boat, or walk on the water with Yeshua.  Selah.