THE LIVING WORD

THE LIVING WORD

                I grew up in a very specific doctrine oriented church. It was our doctrines that set us apart from everyone else and so defending our particular doctrines became the focus of all our evangelism. As such Jesus took a distant second place.

                In the early seventies, there was a stirring in the church as people began to awaken to the message of righteousness by faith. As such, people began to push for a more Christ centered approach to truth and I remember the evangelist that we were connected with saying: “We already have so much information to cover. How are we supposed to add Jesus to everything?

                Nowadays that seems like a ridiculous question to ask since Jesus is the sum total of everything having to do with our salvation. He is Creator, Savior, High Priest and soon coming King of kings. How could He ever have been anything but the center?

                I am a firm believer in doctrine, but I believe there are important guidelines we must follow:

1.       Beginning with Moses and the prophets Jesus explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the scriptures. “Luke 24:27. In other words all scripture is about Jesus and by Jesus and for Jesus and it is given for the purpose of our walking in intimate fellowship with Him.

2.       In order to establish doctrine, we must take all that the Bible has to say on the subject and not just the parts of scripture that fit our name brand. In doing this I found out that many of the things I believed were not really scriptural.

3.       Our doctrine should be easily provable by anyone reading the scriptures and should never be pieced together from remote passages here or there, especially if they are taken out of context. And if the doctrines we are building don’t form a better and more complete picture of Christ, then why bother with them?

4.       While we may appreciate the many inspired commentaries on the Bible, written by holy saints, or scholars, but in the end we should truly take the Bible and the Bible only as our rule of faith and practice. Each one of us must give an account to the Lord and that is why we should not turn our relationship with the Lord over to the control of others… not the church, not the pastors, not our friends or people’s opinions. We can all share with each other and encourage each other, but in the end we must each one stand or fall upon our own integrity with the Word and whether we have truly lived by the Spirit or the flesh.

5.       No one can save us but Jesus Christ and so everything we study and learn must be drawing us into His arms, or it is just so much information. Jesus said “If I be lifted up I will draw all men unto Me.”  Jn. 12:32 As such, belonging to the right church will be of little value unless it is drawing you into the bosom of Jesus, leading you to the foot of the cross, getting you born again and filled with His Holy Spirit.

6.       Some treat the Holy Spirit as a figurehead … a distant name that they invoke for baptism… but they do not have a living and vibrant life in the Holy Spirit. They are not vitally connected…and while they claim to believe in Jesus, they fail to realize that the Holy Spirit was sent by Jesus to become His very presence in us. It is the Holy Spirit that makes us a living temple of God. The Holy Spirit is not only the life of the living stones but He is the living mortar that holds the living stones together in unity so that we are being formed into the living Body of Christ in this world.

7.       Apart from that vital connection, we don’t even belong to Him and we become a disconnected hand or foot that has no idea what the head is saying or where it is directing the body to go.

8.       Right now, the Bride of Christ is being called out of every “ism” and into a life transforming, vital and intimate relationship with Jesus. Doctrines can be compromised, misapplied, or wrongly applied, but our marriage to Jesus is not like that. We are either becoming vitally connected or we are playing the harlot… and we can know the difference internally in the connection between our soul and spirit.

9.       When we are being unfaithful, our soul and our spirit will be at odds with each other and it will manifest as a bad conscience and or in stress and depression. Jesus dwells in our spirit. As such there is no fooling Him or even ourselves. Laws may have loopholes, but the vital connection between our spirit and the Spirit of God knows no such thing as loopholes. We are either married or unfaithful. We are either living by the Spirit or by the flesh. 1Cor. 2:16

10.   When people say they are following their own path to God and that path does not include an intimate knowledge and continuous application of the Word as well as a complete new birth in which one has died to this world and is living in the power of Jesus’ resurrection, they are on a sure path to hell. The great outpouring of the Holy Spirit that is coming will reveal this so that everything that is not of Him will be shaken out.

                The Holy Spirit has been sent into our hearts to produce His fruit in and through us. It is that fruit that Jesus is looking for and producing in our lives. The GIFTS of the Spirit, on the other hand, are for ministry and they have very little to do with our worthiness or righteousness. There were people in Mt 7:22-25 that worked miracles and cast out demons and the whole bit, but Jesus said “I never knew you Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness. “  And right after that Jesus begins talking about those who build upon solid foundations. Our lives must be founded upon the Rock and that Rock is Jesus. You will either obey Him or rebel against Him and there is no in between.

                This is what happened to the Charismatic movement. They focused on the signs and wonders, but ignored the fruit of the Spirit. It was a house of cards waiting to fall. And it was a true move of God in the beginning, but they got sidetracked by focusing on signs and wonders to the exclusion of holy living… so they ended up with all of these miracle working charlatans out there raking in big bucks, fleecing the flock and promising prosperity and turning Christianity into a Me centered religion and so now Jesus is beginning to cleanse His temple and to chase out the money changers and to restore true worship and obedience and reverence.

                But He is also removing dead doctrines and replacing them with His resurrection life so that truth will become transformational, rather than just informational… and if it can’t transform us into the image of God’s dear Son, then it is not worth the effort we are giving it. It is a diversion and an idol.

                We need to understand that Jesus purposely lived His life in juxtaposition to the Pharisees. They were willing to kill Him for the slightest infraction of their rules for keeping the Sabbath, for instance, but He reminded then that the Sabbath was only a picture of a greater reality. Our rest is in Him, for we cannot rest from our own labors until we have come to a point where we are living by His power and not our own. This is not a statement either for or against the importance of the Sabbath… but we can make the Sabbath an idol if we do not understand its true meaning and that is what the Pharisees had done.

                The truth as it is in Jesus is deep and infinite in scope. It reaches to the lowest hell and soars to the highest heaven for He is seated at the right hand of the Father just as He has been since His resurrection. He intercedes for us before the throne of God. As one who stooped down to become one of us, He is now working in us to bring us home. We are the Bride of Christ and He is looking for a Bride after His own kind. Through His living Word and His Holy Spirit we can become one with Him.  Selah