PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

                I AM READING A BOOK CALLED “The Way of the Pilgrim” author unknown. It is an ancient book translated from Russian and I presume written by a Russian Orthodox believer.

                I am inspired by his devotion to learning how to pray without ceasing and how to separate himself from the cares and lusts of this world and to live fully unto God. But I am also frustrated at times by his frequent language that hints at being saved by his works of piety.

                In defense of the Pilgrim, there are times of clarity when with brilliant illumination he speaks of our inability to do any good thing of ourselves. He also acknowledges the work of Christ in our inner man through the Holy Spirit and maybe it is his somewhat ancient means of expression that makes him sound so foreign to our modern Protestant way of thinking. In the end I think he draws the right conclusions, but along the way I wish to see him finding more rest in Christ.

                You may wonder why I would even read such a book, but I do so in the full cognizance that Christian society as a whole has drifted away from piety and holiness and seemingly entered into a presumptive grace wherein God expects nothing of us but to passively believe. But it is within this careless attitude that the church has become virtually indistinguishable from the world. We often pick the texts that talk about freedom and ignore all of those that speak of our responsibility as followers and Disciples of Christ. So we go on living for self as if we have not been called out of the world.

                As usual I talk to the Lord about everything and so I will share my subsequent conversation with Him because in this conversation are insights that may be valuable for all of us.

THIS THEN IS HOW THE LORD EXPLAINED IT TO ME:

                Have I not told you that you are no longer a slave but a son? I take no pleasure in the son who thinks like a slave. Did I not make that clear in My parable of the Prodigal son? When you come back to Me, I restore you to sonship. I kill the fatted calf. I ignore your mumblings about being a hired servant. I won’t hear of it for you are My son.

                There is a time for repentance and prostration. That time comes when you have strayed from Me to live in the flesh. It comes when you have grown lax by letting the world into your temple. It is then that I must come in with cords of wrath to take back what is Mine. I am jealous for your heart and I will not share it with another.

                Nevertheless it is sonship that I crave from you and not slavery. Be a servant to your fellow man, but when you come to Me, come as My son and I your Abba Father. For I delight in you. I delight in your friendship more than your prostrations. A slave does such things because he does not know Me as his Father. Stand before Me my son. Walk before me with a humble, yet confident heart and I will live in you and guide you by My Spirit and by My Word.

THEN I RESPONDED TO THE LORD

                Oh Lord, this is what I have believed in my heart. I never want to offend you with my carelessness, but neither do I desire to offend you with the works of my flesh. You took the offerings of flesh and you consumed them with fire. You clothed me in Your righteousness. You threw away my fig leaves. You took away my heart of stone and gave me a new heart. Your Spirit has become in me a well… a river of living water that flows from my innermost being.

                 It is from my inward new man that I live and not from outward works and devotions of the flesh. So while I admire the struggles of the Pilgrim, I find myself wishing that He would find rest in the New Creation that you have placed in his heart.

TO THIS THE LORD REPLIES

                By faith in Me you have become a child of Abraham. He was reckoned as righteous by his faith in Me long before the Law came. I became a High Priest to him after the order of Melchizedek long before the New Covenant in My blood. Still, he was not righteous in the way that you are righteous. He was reckoned righteous by faith. You, on the other hand are righteous because My Spirit dwells in you.

                Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were my servants and for this reason and for the sake of the world I became a servant. It was as a servant that I died         , but I died to bring forth sons. This is the difference between the Old and New Covenants. In the Old Covenant I am the Shepherd who protects His lambs from the wolves. But in order to bring in the New Covenant, I became the Lamb that would be killed by the wolves.

                I died as a servant, but I rose again as a Son… the first fruits of the New Creation man. So even though I was acknowledged by My father as His beloved Son from the beginning; I took on the role of a servant in order to die, but I rose from the dead as a Son in order that I may bring many sons to glory.      

THIS CONCLUDED THIS PART OF MY CONVERSATION WITH THE Lord as I went on to personal natters.

                Perhaps it is in the line of sonship that we differ in our understanding from the Pilgrim, but what he says is nevertheless true. We have lost the art of devotion to constant prayer and devotion to the Lord. We are no longer diligent in bible study and prayer. Consequently we live in a world today where Christianity is shrinking and Islam is growing by leaps and bounds.

                To make matters words, “biblical illiteracy in America, even among Christians who describe themselves as “born again” is rampant. A 2009 study by the Barna Group revealed that only 9 percent of American adults possess a biblical worldview. But it is not much better among born-again believers; only 10 percent of people who call themselves born again hold a biblical worldview.” (“The Great Inception” by Derek Gilbert)

                Not only have Christians largely dropped a biblical worldview, they have abandoned the study of Bible prophecy. So if they don’t hold a biblical world view and they no longer study Bible prophecy how are they even going to know what the end times are going to look like? They don’t and that is why they are stunningly unaware that we have entered the end times… that we are currently seeing the sequence of end time events listed in the Bible quickly taking shape even as the church sleeps.

                It is because we of this great falling away from the faith, from constant and persistent prayer, from piety and from devotion to God that we are racing towards the Mark of the Beast and Armageddon with very little warning being given.

                Very few people have understood that God acted to deliver America from being judged as a “goat nation.” When He brought in a Cyrus to deliver us from national anti-Semitism and to restore our protectorate of Israel, He was giving America one more moment of grace.

                Still the bulls of Bashan are surrounding our president with demonic zeal to dethrone and destroy him. This is not about the personality or the holiness of our president… it is about what God is doing to deliver us from an unspeakable fate. Let’s face it. He could never have accomplished such an upset using a ladder climbing politician. He needed a hard-nosed business man to cut the deal. We need to get in line with what God is doing and pray for our nation like never before. As we can see, God is exposing wickedness in high places and perhaps only our prayers will prevent Satan from snapping back with overwhelming vengeance to overthrow a weak church’s prayers. We must stand in the gap.

                But a nation full of weak Christians with no biblical worldview and no understanding of Bible prophecy will not see God’s will enough to pray as they should. Nowhere in the bible does God instruct us to sit back and wait for the rapture. We are sons and daughters of God, but we need to understand that a wise servant will rule over a foolish son and if we continue to be foolish, then God will send in the slaves of Islam to rule over us, for to us as sons the Lord says:

                “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin, and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, ‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines and He scourges every son whom He receives.” Hebrews 12: 4-6.

                Much is required of us as sons and daughters of God. He is forming and shaping us into people worthy of royalty. We are being trained to reign… to live as ambassadors of the King. More is expected of sons and daughters than of servants. Servants merely do what is expected of them, but sons and daughters must come to reflect the image of their Father. Think on these things.