Matthew

Emphasis on the First Commandment

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There are two commandments that stand out within the entire Bible and are particularly emphasized by Jesus in the New Testament.  The first commandment is to love God and the second is to love other people.  The first is first and the second is second–they aren’t equal.  If we forget to love God, it really doesn’t matter how much we love people (1 Cor 13).  The first commandment is a requirement for the second, and it is greater (Mat 22:37-38).

I’ve mentioned these commandments before, but it’s very important to recognize the difference between them.  They wouldn’t be highlighted separately if they were the same; thus, we do not love God BY loving other people, we love God THEN we love other people.  This is not a subtle difference.

So how do we love God?  Scripture says we love God by keeping His commandments–we completely submit ourselves to God in obedience of whatever He has for us (John 15:1-11).

This is why loving God has to happen before the loving of people: God has a specific design for how we should individually love those in our spheres of influence.  We aren’t called to random acts of kindness; we’re called to specific works which He prepared beforehand for us to do (Eph 2:10)!

If we neglect to focus on a relationship with the Lord foremost (on truly and wholeheartedly loving Him), then instead of being led by His voice to pour out His love, we become recklessly attempting to earn or prove our salvation to God, ourselves and the world.  We may help people to feel good in the now, but aren’t able to offer them insight toward a stable relationship with the Lord because we don’t have it for ourselves; what is Christianity unless Christians can offer both?  This ‘being good’ wears us out, makes us feel constantly inadequate or in competition with others, and most importantly, it doesn’t work–God knows our heart.

The ‘goodness’ has to come from the inside out.  As we spend time with Him, we know Him and love Him.  He gives us a heart to love Him–more and more as we seek Him–because He knows how small we are.  And as we completely submit to Him in love, we can’t help but be stirred in our spirits to help His other loves.  It really does happen naturally.  And it brings with it a confidence of being a true heir and son or daughter to the Most High God.

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Have you noticed the changes in the church?

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Some of you may have heard about or noticed a transition in the church–a “new breed” of Christians that are arising (especially out of the pentecostal type churches).  Well, there are actually two transitions: some of the church is beginning to adopt New Age doctrine (the emergent church), others of the church are moving into a greater move of the Holy Spirit (we’ll need this outpouring in order to fight the spiritual battle at hand; Acts 2:17-21).

The two transitions seem alike without prudent discernment of the spirits.  Many in the fundamentalist churches are confused or mad about the changes.  The high percentage of Christians throughout the denominations, I think, haven’t even noticed.

I want to make it clear that the Lord freed me FROM New Age thinking.  As a result, I recognize it seeping into the church more clearly than most, and I’m not about to fall back into that movement.  That said, God has power (much more power than the enemy!) and He wants to work through His people as a demonstration of His glory.  I’m sure I’ll discuss both sides in more detail in the future.

What the church needs is to be fully opened to the Holy Spirit, and fully closed to the multiple deceptive spirits.

Fortunately we know that when we ask God the Father to reveal Himself to us that we may know and love Him more, He will not give us deceptive spirits but His Holy Spirit in abundance (Mat 7:11, Luke 11:13).  As long as we’re plugged into the right God, we’ll have the right Spirit.  If you love the Lord, there is no reason to fear what He has for you–He loves you too!

On the other hand, some personalities are so good at being open to new things, that they willingly trust and want whatever friends, family, pastors, etc advertise as being excellent ways to connect to God.  When it comes to spiritual matters, we should never trust anything but the Word of God (Psalm 146:3, Jer 9:4-6, Mic 7:5, Acts 17:11, Prov 3:5).  There are already many false prophets in the world, so it’s very necessary that we test every spirit to know whether or not it’s from God (1 John 4:1-6 and 2 Cor 11:3-4, 13-15).

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My Spiritual Independence Day

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Happy American Independence Day!  Today is also the anniversary of my baptism in water!

I was baptized, first,  as an infant in an ELCA Lutheran church, per German tradition.  I won’t say there’s anything wrong with baptizing infants, but true baptism is a personal choice.  As I began to understand my own relationship with the Lord, I wanted to demonstrate my commitment to Him through baptism.  I didn’t have a home church at this time, so I went back to my family’s Lutheran church and met with each of the pastors until I had convinced one to baptize me ‘again’–this time by immersion, since the word baptism literally means ‘to immerse, to submerge, to cleanse, to overwhelm’.

I consider that this “second” baptism was my ONE baptism, as Ephesians 4:5 says (“one Lord, one faith, one baptism“).

The baptism in water is a baptism of repentance (Matt 3), an appeal to God for a good conscience (1 Peter 3:21), and a baptism into death as we symbolically (and in our hearts) lay down our lives for the Lord that we may be resurrected in Him with a renewed mind (Rom 6).  Baptism in water isn’t the only baptism (there is also the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the baptism in fire; Matt 3:11), but the baptism in water is special because it marks our heartfelt commitment to God the Father and the significance of our decision to follow Jesus by sacrificing ourselves.  And while we should continuously ask for more of the Holy Spirit and to be refined by His fire, it only takes one heartfelt baptism in water to enter into a covenant commitment with the Lord.

Being baptized in water was a very special day for me–as it should be.  I was baptized in the bay at my parent’s summer property with only a handful of close friends and family.  I cried through the whole ceremony because I was so moved by the gravity of my commitment to Jesus.  I could barely say the vows I had chosen.

I didn’t plan to be baptized on the Fourth of July, but the symbolism is perfect!  Just as we celebrate our country’s freedom, I am celebrating my personal freedom through Christ.  Praise the Lord!

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You will know them by their fruit

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Jesus warns us about false prophets, saying: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits” (Matt 7:15-16).

But what is that fruit?

Fruit is the outward evidence of the inward seed. So, for instance, if you have the seed for a plum tree, and it grows, it will produce plums.  A banana tree will produce bananas.  You know that it’s a plum tree and not a banana tree by looking at the fruit.

Sometimes this takes a little discernment.  The difference between a plum and a pluot, for instance, isn’t so significant that you could immediately see it unless you were adequately familiar with both.  So, to discern God’s fruit, we need to spend time getting to know Him lest we get caught in something that seems true but isn’t.

And if we want to produce God’s fruit, we must first have His seed (a foundation of intimacy with Him).

It’s not the outward things we do that evidence the seed (you can give to charity, feed the poor, love animals, etc whether or not you know God), but it’s the outward manifestations of the inward things (the deep Joy that can’t help but bubble over, the true Peace regardless of circumstance…) that point out whether our fruit is good or bad.

My husband and I were watching the church sermon of a leader we’d never seen before.  We’d heard really good things about this speaker, but when we heard him speak it was clear that he wasn’t preaching through the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-23; Eph 5:9).  Instead of the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit, we distinguished anger, hostility and offense–even though he was quoting the Bible.

You see, it’s not just about what people say–in this case, much of the sermon was from an adequate Biblical perspective.  What matters more is the spirit in which the message is given.  We don’t want to graft ourselves into the wrong tree by allowing ourselves to be mislead by someone who isn’t connected with the Lord’s heart.

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What’s the point of Jesus?

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God created.  His creations chose to sin (disobey God).  The world was no longer good.  But God STILL wanted a relationship with us, so He chose the smallest and weakest of the people groups (the Jews) and gave them extraordinary favor that they may demonstrate His glory to the nations.  God always wanted the nations, but He chose the Jews to be the evangelical messengers.

To the Jews, God made four covenants (with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David).  In the covenant with Moses, God gave 613 commands for His people to follow, and the idea was that by acting out righteousness, their hearts would begin to manifest a burning desire for God.  Unfortunately (and quite fortunately for us gentiles!), there were very few Jewish people who really developed that love.  And sacrifice without love is meaningless.  That’s where Jesus comes in.

Jesus is God.  He’s the physical representation of the invisible God (Col 1:15).  He’s the outward manifestation–the exact representation–of God (Heb 1:3).  And He’s God’s Son (Matt 3:17, Matt 17:5, Mark 9:7, Luke 9:35).

When God saw that the Jewish people struggled to keep His commandments and develop true love for Him, He spoke to His prophets about a new covenant that He would bring.  The new covenant would allow the people to really connect with Him because His commandments would be written on their hearts (internally) instead of on stone (externally).  And though Christians are still to follow the commands of the Lord, Jesus promises that we would find rest for our souls, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matt 11:29-30).

Jesus came to earth for several reasons (He tells us many in the gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).  But these I want to highlight:

Without Jesus, it would be impossible for us to overcome; but when He died, was buried, and was resurrected for our sins, He also sent power through the Holy Spirit that we may intimately connect with Him and the Father (John 16:7).  It is such a powerful promise that we would be able to intimately communicate with the God of the universe!

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An encouragement on facing long periods of rough times…

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Julie Meyer (of IHOP-KC) spoke recently on how the wilderness often becomes a door of hope and divine encounters:

Hosea 2:14-15 says, “Therefore, behold, I will allure her / Bring her into the wilderness / And speak kindly to her. (15) Then I will give her her vineyards from there, / And the valley of Achor as a door of hope. / And she will sing there as in the days of her youth, / As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.”

Another example of this is when Moses was in the wilderness and then in doing his daily routine the Lord appeared to him in the burning bush–when he turned and looked, God opened the door to him…

She exhorted the church to therefore be clothed with humility (1 Peter 5:5-6), meaning to cheerfully submit to God’s plan even when He gives your dream to another–humility, she said, is the willingness to be ignored by men and serve the lowest of the positions for Jesus’ sake.  We have to find great Joy where He has us–even when it’s the back row.  When we truly humble ourselves, God brings opportunities we couldn’t imagine: 2 Chron 7:13-14, Prov 8:34-35.

I’ve heard and read John Bevere speak with a similar heart about how God transforms us from the wilderness to power in the Holy Spirit. He’s said, roughly, that the Lord is raising people up in the wilderness–training them in a powerful way through obstacles that others aren’t having to go through so that He can give them the Elijah anointing (which was also given as a partial fulfillment to John the Baptist).  The wilderness is like a special boot-camp to strengthen us in the Lord.  Then, we will proclaim the Truth (there will be a stress on repentance) without the fear of man because we have such a strong fear of God.  The fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom.

John the Baptist was trained for ministry in the wilderness, then, “Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him” (Mat 3:5).  We don’t have to worry about the details of our ministry if the Lord is behind us because “a man’s gift makes room for him…” (Prov 18:16).

The key is consecration to the Lord–it’s a spiritual wilderness (though sometimes with physical realities).

We are led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, but come out of the wilderness in the Power of the Holy Spirit.  Think Jesus as He’s tempted in the desert… or Joseph… or Abraham… or Moses… or John the Baptist… and so on… most every powerful leader is trained in the desert before facing the giants–and supernaturally releasing the power and glory of the Lord.

When I asked the Lord why it would take a wilderness experience to find that door of hope and that power of the Holy Spirit, He immediately brought to my mind the following answers:

  • We have to be completely God-focused, submitting to Him entirely (willing to do God’s will even at the loss of jobs, friends, respect, material things, etc).  If God is not our number one love, the wilderness will help us to put that love back into focus.
  • We have to STRONGLY hear our Lord’s voice and be lead by Him alone.  Too often, we rely on crunches (other people’s faith/experiences, religious tradition, …) because they’re available, and we forget to inquire directly of the Lord.  There are so many ways He can speak to us.  Let’s not limit His voice.
  • We have to see the power/things He will give us from His perspective so that we are good stewards of them.  Everything we do must be filtered through a pure Love for Him; we can have no attachment to things (though of course we appreciate them) and Jesus Himself must have a higher place than any power/gift He gives us (though, of course, we are commanded to walk in power, which means first spending a lot of time at His feet).
  • We have to be purified from every encumbrance that is hindering us from running the race.  In this way, the wilderness becomes the place where baptism in fire occurs: it’s a chance for us to allow the dross (wicked/foolish/fleshly desires) to surface so we can ask the Lord to take them out once and for all.
  • We build endurance, maturity, and a rightful view of the Lord’s character despite what others are saying (or not saying) of Him (assuming, of course, we’re pursuing righteousness in the midst of the wilderness experience like Job).  In other words, because there are no physical pleasures to dull our spirits in the wilderness (over-indulgence of the flesh dulls the spirit–which is one reason why we fast), we are able to deeply align our spirit to the Father’s and gain His wisdom, thus maturing, and strengthening us.  Job received a rightful view of the Lord through His trial; His friends (though some of their statements to us may seem ‘logical’) didn’t have it!
  • We connect so strongly to the heart of God that we desire to extend that Love to others.  In this way, we learn how to fulfill the first commandment (to our best ability) and it begins to overflow into obedience.
  • We build Faith that if He can sustain us in the wilderness, He can continue to sustain us no matter what.  We can also encourage others with our testimony.  Faith helps us to walk worthy and confident in our callings.
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