Rev. 22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

This verse is one of the most amazing insights into the partnership of prayer, between the Lord and His Church. Through a Church that prays in corporate intercession, God calls the unsaved into His Kingdom. But without a praying Church the harvest is lost. When the Church prays for the harvest of souls until the Spirit of God lifts them into one accord, at that point they can literally call the lost into God’s Kingdom.

“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.”

Conditioning

Corporate intercession involves both petitioning and conditioning. Through the prayer of agreement, the Church comes into a state where we are “conditioned” with Jesus’ love for the unsaved and are able to exercise His authority to forgive.

John 20:21 So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”

John 20:22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

John 20:23 “If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”

This brings us into such a harmony with Him, so that we might say to the lost, on His behalf and with His anointing, “Come”. You get the picture of a bride and her husband inviting guests into their home. This is the idea in the mind of God.

The Power of Corporate Prayer

Jesus did everything to get His Church to pray as “one”.

Matt. 16:18 …upon this rock I will build my church

Matt. 18:18 …Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heavenÖwhatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Matt. 18:19 …if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.

Matt. 18:20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

The hand that reaches out to the lost cannot override a prayerless arm. But when the Church prays in unison the power of the Holy Spirit will flow through it to the unsaved. That’s the key to revival: praying till we all pray. You can understand members being indifferent towards a prayerless church. But to neglect a praying church is to neglect God. Paul knew that a praying church had the power to call to the lost: “Come!” The power of harmonious prayer blends the Church with her Lord, and empowers us to call to those in darkness. This is exactly how Jesus speaks to the world; and prayer gives us His voice.

Eph. 6:19 And (pray) for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

Col. 4:3 Withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds:

Col. 4:4 That I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak.

More on prayer tomorrow, so until then…

Stay On The Path!

Psa. 84:4 Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are those who dwell in Your house and Your presence; they will be singing Your praises all the day long. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

Psa. 84:5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

Psa. 84:6 Passing through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a place of springs; the early rain also fills [the pools] with blessings.

Psa. 84:7 They go from strength to strength [increasing in victorious power]; each of them appears before God in Zion.

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

The heart is the center of our life, the capitol of our being. We may stay committed to a thing for a brief period, after our interest has dissolved, but the passions of the heart cannot be suppressed. From our heart life is navigated. For good or for evil, a man cannot but pursue the treasures he has laid in his heart. The mind can stroll uncommitted from one idea to the next, but the heart takes possession of its affections.

Luke 6:45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of theheart his mouth speaketh.

Luke 12:34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

God is so wise to pave His revelation through our hearts. From our hearts arise our true intentions. And if our heart forsakes God our life will soon reveal it. Any genuiness about us will be found in our hearts.

Psa. 26:2 Examine me, O LORD, and prove me; try my reins and my heart.

Jesus, ever the heart reader, was able to show mercy to so many, whose outward imperfections drew nothing but rejection from the religious. What a tremendous comfort for souls who, though fraught with flaws, but nonetheless genuine towards God, for them to know that no true-ness can be kept from His view.

Heb. 4:13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

While no amount of opposite intentions can overturn the affects of evil deeds, it is so reassuring to know that God traces the trail of every work, back to the heart that sparked its doing. And He knows either the malice or misunderstanding that resides there.

Jer. 17:10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every manaccording to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.

God’s path for you is never laid in the shifting sands of your daily circumstances.  For you have little control over the changing landscape of your environment. But God lays the steps of His highway in the one place that you can manage, no matter how the outside climate of life changes. His highway passes through your heart.

Prov. 4:23 Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.

God never commands us to do anything that we, with His help, can’t do. He has repeatedly exhorted man to guard over, manage and be a good steward of his own heart. You CAN be honest, sincere and dedicated, if you choose to be. No one can prevent you. So your Heavenly Father places His relationship with you in the one place where you can manage it: your heart.

Stay On The Path!

Psa. 84:4 Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are those who dwell in Your house and Your presence; they will be singing Your praises all the day long. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

Psa. 84:5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

Psa. 84:6 Passing through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a place of springs; the early rain also fills [the pools] with blessings.

Psa. 84:7 They go from strength to strength [increasing in victorious power]; each of them appears before God in Zion.

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

Most of you will probably never have a personal audience with the President. And it’s doubtful that the Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol is going to be making a stop at your house. Most people, in their lifetime, will never have the experience of standing before a powerful person of influence and being offered limitless resources to change their life. These are the things that occupy the fantasies of our secret dreams.And most realists train their minds to discard these thoughts as a foolish waste of time.

This is why it’s so hard to seriously believe the beautiful promise of Jesus.

Matt. 11:28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

How our minds balk at the notion that the Almighty God, Creator of the Universe, would welcome us personally into His Presence. Much less allow us to dwell there in the full benefit of His favor. Yet countless souls, in their lifetimes, have relieved the burden of a favorless life in a graceless world, by entering the Presence of God.

We are all too familiar with the pain of “reality” as it speaks its pronouncements of denial to us. So terminal are its decisions, that we mistake them for the voice of God. No wonder so many find it hard to conceive that God is “good”, much less abounding with grace and eager to give. How hard it is for them to give praise to God, when they mistake the arbitrary cruelty of life for the will of God.

Yet there is a high “reality”, often found in the depths of the world, which has welcomed many a weary traveler. The sweet gates of grace, into the presence of God, stand just opposite of every bitterness.

Isa. 61:3 (Jesus came) To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;

Many of life’s travelers have learned to live by praise, in the Presence of the Lord. They pass through valleys of weeping, with the highways to Zion in their hearts. They all appear before God. The poorest of persons in this world can afford the highest of Zion’s luxuries, when making Jesus their strength. The denials of life have no power in this place, where curses are reversed and terminal edicts are overturned. What force can bind you in the Presence of Him who freed Jesus from the grave? What pursuer can chase you through the gates Zion and remain your oppressor? Praise paves the highways to Zion through your heart.

Psa. 16:11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

The “path of life” begins at the acknowledging Of Jesus’ Lordship; where our Heavenly Father welcomes all worshippers, with an exchange of fortunes. Wherever you go from there, with His praise singing from your heart, His Presence goes with you.

Stay On The Path!

Hos. 10:12 Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.

Jer. 4:3 For thus saith the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

When young people are preparing for their future; when they are preparing themselves for the day when they will have to provide a home for a family; they “sow to themselves” in education. They don’t just wait till the urge hits and then go grab a spouse and start making babies. That is, unless the are planning to fail. Life is a process of sowing for your harvest. As we have been seeing in the Parable of the Sower (Mk 4:1-32), God moves for us in the exact same way: the sow-and-reap science of the Kingdom.

Therefore, notice that the Prophet Hosea says,

“…Sow to yourselves…“

He says this to instruct the believers to prepare themselves for God “raining” the fruit of their sowing upon them. Through the Prophet, God is telling us that when we (as individuals, families, communities or nations) need an outpouring of righteousness from God, that it comes as a result of sowing, and not just because we need it. When I was a boy and needed to get a new bike, my Dad would say, “It’s time to mow some yards.” If I needed money to come to me, then I needed to sow some work. Now if my Dad had just given me everything I wanted, when I wanted it, imagine my shock when I entered the real world and my landlord and grocer wouldn’t do the same once a month. My Dad would usually supplement my earnings, but I was learning to sow and reap. My Dad wanted me to learn that I had the capability within myself to produce what I needed in life, by sowing for it. He wanted me to learn that life would work for me if I applied the right principles, instead of just sitting and waiting for someone to give me everything. In that way, he prepared me to go forth in life and become what I was destined to be. Until people learn to sow to themselves they never begin to tap their God-given purposes.

The next thing God said to the people was,

“…break up your fallow ground…“

Fallow ground refers to the farmer’s fields that lay dormant, without having a crop planted in them for a season or more. A dormant field, or fallow ground, doesn’t remain as acreage of freshly furrowed dirt, waiting to be planted. Instead, it fills with weeds, and becomes hard.

“Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.”

When the time comes that we need a mighty outpouring from God - a visitation of His blessings and the installing of His righteousness among us; then we must understand the way He works. Like my Dad, God doesn’t just want us eating out of His Hand like little goats in a petting zoo. Check with Genesis. You’ll find out that we were designed to rule and reign with Him; not just sit under fruit trees with gaping mouths, waiting for something to fall in. But God wants to produce His righteousness through us, not just plop it on us. He wants us to be interactive with Him in making provision, and not just dependent upon magic. In short, we sow His Word to ourselves and from its maturity comes the fruit of our obedience: His blessings and provision. Now that sounds a lot better than being little chickens in a barnyard, doesn’t it?

“…fallow ground…”

What is fallow ground in us? It is specifically the areas of our thought life, our time and our pursuits that are not sown with the Word of God. If you work 6 days a week from 9 to 5, that doesn’t necessarily mean that those hours are “fallow ground” - filled with weeds and crusted over. But if in those hours, there is no thought of the Lord; if you behave carnally like an unsaved person; if you never pray and maintain an open-heart to the Holy Spirit; THEN that is fallow ground.

“Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.”

Jeremiah said not to sow among the thorns. In other words, don’t just cast your prayer (when asking God to rain provision and help on your world), onto the hard, weed-choked ground of a life that is not responsive to His Word. Because nothing will happen; except that Jesus said, the birds of the air will swoop down and eat up your seed (Mk 4:4,15). Truly God desires to pour out His righteousness upon our society; to help us in times of trouble and meet our challenging trials with the response of His blessings. He truly wishes to set His perfect order into our lives. He doesn’t want us twisting in the winds of circumstance. He wants us to rule and reign with Him in life. And that requires our cooperation with His Word. He wants to bring His Word to pass through our faithfulness. This will demonstrate to the world that He made us for fellowship with Himself. It shows the world that we are partners not puppets; sons, not goats.

“…for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.”

Today, our conflicted world is desperate for an outpouring from God. But that visitation cannot bypass us, and just come out of Heaven because the world needs it. The call from Heaven is for Christians to wake up to the realization that this “rain of righteousness” is going to require breaking, weeding and sowing every inch of fallow ground we have.

Stay On The Path!

Luke 19:8 And Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.”

Luke 19:9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house,because he, too, is a son of Abraham.

Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

When Zaccheus’’ heart was convicted by the Lord’’s presence, he responded by announcing that he was going to affect a turn-around in his work. Having been a tax collector, and undoubtedly corrupt, this was the place where he wanted to manifest the impact of God’’s change upon his heart. His response was what naturally occurred to him. He probably wasn’’t thinking of it in terms of God’’s overall plan for man. But the fact was that Zaccheus’ heart got hit with a Holy Ghost conviction that went through him, straight to the work of his hands. Remember that it was Adam’’s work that received the pronouncement of a curse. God planned to redeem not just our souls but our calling and works. So the Lord has always been very interested in the marketplace of men.

Titus 2:14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

In fact, the vast majority of what Jesus referred to as “the Harvest” sits squarely within the marketplace. You only have to look at the parables of Jesus to figure out that God has a deep interest in our jobs and vocations. It almost seems strange that the Lord would have to mention that the Harvest needed laborers, seeing that it’s filled with Christians who work in it everyday. But obviously people of faith have always had this conflict between the secular and the sacred. Sacred being Church and secular being work. It’’s not hard to compel Christians to have a sense of significance about their church participation, but too often they’’ve been left to feel that God just tolerates the time they have to spend on the job. It’s no wonder they’’re right in the middle of the harvest but have no sense of being “sent”.

Luke 10:2 …The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.

From yesterday’’s devotional entitled, “Rehabilitating Our Worldview”…

Truth is, the church has lots of people already in place in the harvest. They’’re just not ministering, and it’’s usually because the church doesn’’t like or feel comfortable associating sacred ministry with a carnal world.But isn’’t that exactly what Jesus did.  And isn’’t that precisely why He got into conflict with the church of His day? If the Church can’t rehabilitate its worldview concerning labor and the marketplace, we will find ourselves once again in conflict with the Lord Himself. As much as God delights in our worship services Jesus was more concerned with reaching the business centers than He was the religious centers.

So then, if work is not a product of the curse, and Satan didn’’t invent it, it must surely be in God’’s plan to influence the marketplace of men.

Gen. 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion…

Gen. 2:15 And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Edento do work in it and take care of it.

Your work is ministry unto the Lord, and your workplace is His place of ministry.

Eccl. 2:24 There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.

God ordained work BEFORE worship! In fact it can be said that work IS worship and that gathering to “worship” is rest from labor, not shifting into worship. Coming in to worship is for the purpose of giving thanks for the blessing of work and its prosperity.

Deut. 16:15 Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the LORD thy God in the place which the LORD shall choose: because the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice.

Is religious work the only work that God considers as “good work”? “Good work” is work that fulfills His will.This pleases God. And laboring as His Ambassador in the marketplace is doing His will, fulfilling both the Adamic mandate and the Great Commission.

Heb. 13:21 …make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

In an effort to form the world-view and purpose that Jesus wanted us to have, He taught the disciples in business terms, such as the Parable of the Talents.

Paul gives this explanation of how our lives will be judged. In it he speaks about works that abide and he doesn’’t qualify these as church works. The works of a follower of Christ take place everywhere he goes and every time he labors.

1 Cor. 3:13 Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.

1 Cor. 3:14 If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.

1 Cor. 3:15 If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

Jesus will take possession of the nations of the world upon His return. He receives them as His own. He doesn’’t discard them. In fact, they serve Him. It’s not a stretch to think that many of the works of men, the companies and institutions, great and small, will likewise come under His Lordship, and He will gladly receive them. But before He returns much of the world will be spoiled under the influence of the Antichrist.Many of the jobs and works that exist today will not survive the Tribulation of the Last Days. But much will survive – not every nation falls under the corruption of the Antichrist regime.

It will take the literal personal return of Jesus Christ to usher in His Kingdom reign upon the Earth. But the work we do now, as His Ambassadors, can have far reaching affects upon the marketplaces of the world and the billions of souls who labor there, in preparation for that day. After two thousand years it’s evident that the whole world isn’t going to come streaming into the doors of our churches. And Jesus, knowing that from the beginning, sends us instead, into the marketplace.

Stay On The Path!

Luke 19:8 And Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.”

Luke 19:9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham.

Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

Let’s define two important terms that are necessary in forming our worldview: Marketplace and Ministry

Marketplace…

By marketplace we are referring to the place where man labors and gets things done. This encompasses the realms of commerce, labor, education and government. And these arenas of industry, education and politics, are what Christians refer to as the secular world because the marketplace doesn’t look to religion for its authority. It simply exists because it’s what man does naturally. The marketplace is to man what water is to fish and sky to birds. So here’s a question: would there be a marketplace if Adam hadn’t fallen?  The answer is YES, of course. Because the marketplace isn’t the result of man’s fall into sin but the result of his created nature. The marketplace is the natural product of God’s having designed man as He did. The concept of the marketplace is part of what God created and called “good”. The corruption of the marketplace is the result of Adam’s curse.

Ministry…

By the term ministry, we refer to the business of bringing God’’s deliverance and change-for-the-good to people’s lives. The goal of ministry isn’t witnessing to people but transforming people.

Col. 1:13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translatedus into the kingdom of his dear Son:

1 Cor. 2:4 And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,

1 Cor. 2:5 that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

So if we put these two words together – marketplace ministry – we have a description of what Jesus called His followers to engage in. And we also have the crux of a conflict between the Church’’s self-preservation and its calling:

How can we love the sinner without loving the sin? How can we hate the sin without hating the sinner? And how can we love the world (as God does) and protect ourselves from its corruption

The Church has always tried to fulfill the Great Commission by building churches and trying to get sinners into them. Minimal results have followed. As long as the marketplace offends us enough, so that we don’’t see it as a legitimate field of ministry, we are robbing our own laborers of the encouragement and support they need to be effective.

A horrid yet effective tactic of ancient warfare was to sack a city and rape its mothers and daughters so that their defilement would offend their own men, and they’’d become rejected. Once that happened the ability to become fruitful is taken away. In the same way it seems that all the devil has to do to cause Christians to abandon marketplace ministry is to offend them enough so they’’ll pull back into their churches.

The answer is to boldly follow the example of Jesus. He is the perfect marketplace minister, embodying the love of God for the world. We also pray, as Jesus told us to, that God would send more laborers into the harvest…

Luke 10:2 …The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.

The laborers are already in the harvest …they just need sending. But the church has a directional problem. We orient or members for coming in and not for going out. We need to re-orient the church so it’s in a sending mode and not just a receiving mode. Many Christians are already in the harvest, but aren’’t being sent by their church as marketplace ministers. We’’ll use one evangelist in a church meeting to try to get people from the marketplace into the church, while we have lots of people from the church already in the marketplace, but unsent.

Many Christians feel a call to serve the Lord but aren’t being led by His Spirit to leave their vocations. They are often plagued by a sense of conflict because of the idea that real ministry is in the pulpit. Many try to fulfill their call to ministry through taking a roll in the church. But that seldom brings fulfillment to the call.  Then those drawn to ministry, but not led out of the marketplace, will sometimes have their attachment to secular work, viewed as “clinging to the world”. Truth is, the church has lots of people already in place in the harvest. They’’re just not ministering, and it’s usually because the church doesn’’t like or feel comfortable associating sacred ministry with a carnal world. But isn’t that exactly what Jesus did. And isn’’t that precisely why He got into conflict with the church of His day?

If the Church can’t rehabilitate its worldview concerning labor and the marketplace, we will find ourselves once again in conflict with the Lord Himself. As much as God delights in our worship services Jesus was more concerned with reaching the business centers than He was the religious centers.

Tomorrow we will look at what God thinks about work. So until then……

Stay On The Path!

Luke 19:8 And Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.”

Luke 19:9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham.

Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

From yesterday’’s edition, entitled, “”That Which Was Lost”…”…

“Zaccheus was a tax collector. And tax collectors in those days, arbitrarily tacked on fees that went directly into their pockets. Corrupt as it was, the people could do nothing about it since the Tax Collector operated as an extension of the Roman provincial government. It is safe to assume that Zaccheus was not only despised but also thought of as the last person in the city to qualify for salvation. While most religious people concentrated on their performance of religious rituals as a basis for confidence before God, Jesus shows here that it was his relationship to the marketplace that He was most interested in. And indeed, it proved to be a much bigger issue to the Lord than even his disciples could imagine. Tomorrow we’ll look at Jesus’ interest in the marketplace of the world.”

After explaining that Zaccheus’ conversion was manifested in the way he treated his vocation, Jesus, no doubt, could anticipate the disciples’’ curiosity. Zaccheus didn’t fall at Jesus’ feet or cry out and display brokenness over his corrupt lifestyle. Instead, he simply responded to the conviction of the Lord’’s presence, by making a pledge to change his business practices. Many Christians today would have said (or quietly thought), “Well, that doesn’’t mean anything. God’’s interested in your heart, not your job.” And so, on the momentum of Zaccheus’ confession, and anticipating our assumption that God cares little for men’’s secular work, Jesus immediately follows up using a business-model as a parable, to show that God is VERY interested in the marketplaces of the world….

Luke 19:11 And while they were listening to these things, He went on to tell a parable, because He was near Jerusalem, and they supposed that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.

Luke 19:12 He said therefore, “A certain nobleman went to a distant country to receive a kingdom for himself, and then return.

Luke 19:13 “And he called ten of his slaves, and gave them ten talents, and said to them, ‘Do business with this until I come back.’

Luke 19:14 “But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’

Luke 19:15 “And it came about that when he returned, after receiving the kingdom, he ordered that these slaves, to whom he had given the money, be called to him in order that he might know what business they had done.

Luke 19:16 “And the first appeared, saying, ‘Master, your talent has made ten talents more.’

Luke 19:17 “And he said to him, ‘Well done, good slave, because you have been faithful in a very little thing, be in authority over ten cities.’

Luke 19:18 “And the second came, saying, ‘Your talent, master, has made five talents.’

Luke 19:19 “And he said to him also, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’

Luke 19:20 “And another came, saying, ‘Master, behold your talent, which I kept put away in a handkerchief;

Luke 19:21 for I was afraid of you, because you are an exacting man; you take up what you did not lay down, and reap what you did not sow.’

Luke 19:22 “He said to him, ‘By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave. Did you know that I am an exacting man, taking up what I did not lay down, and reaping what I did not sow?

Luke 19:23 ‘Then why did you not put the money in the bank, and having come, I would have collected it with interest?’

Luke 19:24 “And he said to the bystanders, ‘Take the talent away from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’

Luke 19:25 “And they said to him, ‘Master, he has ten talents already.’

Luke 19:26 “I tell you, that to everyone who has shall more be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.

Jesus knew how temple-oriented they were, and their tendency to think that life outside of “church” is unimportant to God. He attacks their centralized Jerusalem-Temple mentality, and provokes them to think in terms of global expansion through the marketplace. In other words, Jesus had every intention of sending His representatives out into the marketplace of commerce, to use as His pulpit. Faithfulness in the fields of work, be it labor, commerce, education or government, is precisely where He plans to extend the offer of His covenant to the lost. And it is exactly where we should be His Ambassadors.

As a pastor of many years experience, I would never undermine the significance of Church meetings, activities and our gathering together in the Lord. But if we continue to nurture the notion that the spiritually significant ministries occur within the church building or behind its pulpit, then where will we find the love and motivation to be effective in the world? What Christian wants to devote their spiritual zeal to an endeavor that the Church doesn’t even see as a significant ministry? The world is not pouring through the doors of churches. So where is the Lord’s pulpit among those outside the Church? If we think that God has no use for the world, why then is Jesus presented with its nations at His return?

Rev. 11:15 And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdomsof this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

It’s clear in scripture that Jesus takes possession of America, China, France, Thailand, Brazil, etc, etc. If He had no interest in them and saw them merely as the worthless boundaries of Adam’’s failed management of Earth, why then does He receive them? And furthermore, He reigns over them! God most certainly does not hate the world, but only the corruption that has resulted from our rejection of Him.

So think about the labors you bestow upon the Earth today as ministry unto the honor of Him, to whom the world will one day go. Stop thinking of the marketplace simply as a worthless secular pursuit, useful only for providing money for our survival. It is a place for God’’s people to manifest their covenant with Him, and His offer to the world to include them in it…

Deut. 8:18 But you shall [earnestly] remember the Lord your God, for it is He Who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.

It is not the harvesting of money but the testimony of godly business practices that honors God’’s original plan for man.

Tomorrow we will look at rehabilitating our worldview, so until then……

Stay On The Path!

Luke 19:8 And Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.”

Luke 19:9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham.

Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

Adam’’s sin took down the entire creation placed under his stewardship. The plan to expand the Garden and populate the world followed with the first couple under the curse. And in our emphasis on lost souls, we forget that God is interested in Adam’’s commission, which was lost along with himself and his wife, and not just his spiritual life. For so long, the church has been hampered in it’s mission to the world, because of a corrupted religious ideology, that has God loving our souls only and having no interest whatsoever, in the rest of the world.

Church/World Disconnect…

We greatly frustrate our own faith by trying to motivate ourselves to reach out into the world while at the same time, we hold the opinion that God hates the world and has no interest in its activities. How can a Christian succeed as a positive witness for Jesus if he’s led to believe that God has no interest whatsoever in his work and life outside of church attendance? If in emphasizing the importance of church activities, we instill the notion that our secular vocations and involvement in the marketplace, do not fit into the scope of significant ministry, then we are working against the Gospel and not with it! Look again at what Jesus told the disciples and guests at Zaccheus’ house:

“”For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.””

He doesn’’t announce that He has come to simply save “those who” were lost – concentrating only on our soul life. But Jesus specifically widens the circle to encompass that which was lost. And with the loss of Adam’’s relationship with God, so also lost was the fulfillment of his calling to work prosperously and for the glory of God. In fact, labor wasn’t introduced at the pronouncement of the curse. It was introduced at the creation of Adam:

Gen. 2:5-7 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground…And the LORD God formed manof the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Gen. 1:28 And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it [using all its vast resources in the service of God and man]; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth.

Too many people think of their work as part of the curse.  But God only said that as a result of The Fall, that work would become harder and less fruitful.  The curse wasn’t the introduction of work, but the fact that the Earth would now reluctantly yield its fruits.

Gen. 3:17-18 And to Adam He said, Because you have listened and given heed to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it, the ground is under a curse because of you; in sorrow and toil shall you eat [of the fruits] of it all the days of your life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.

As the world slipped under the domain of Adam’’s new overlord (Satan), he would no longer labor for the glory of God but in the shame of his separation from God. And thus a loss of meaning follows most people out to their daily toiling. The redemption of man’’s labors is a big part of God’’s plan. God’’s plan for man called for his labors to be purposeful and blessed. Christians, of all people, should carry a sense of faith and godly purpose into the marketplace. For the Lord Himself and the early Apostles focused most of their ministry, not in temples but in markets, schools and public arenas. Jesus seems to look more at our response to the marketplace than He does our religious activities and promises. Consider what moved Jesus to pronounce that salvation was granted to Zaccheus and his household:

Luke 19:8 And Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.”

Luke 19:9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham.

Zaccheus was a tax collector. And tax collectors in those days, arbitrarily tacked on fees that went directly into their pockets. Corrupt as it was, the people could do nothing about it since the Tax Collector operated as an extension of the Roman provincial government. It is safe to assume that Zaccheus was not only despised but thought of as the last person in the city to qualify for salvation. While most religious people concentrated on their performance of religious rituals as a basis for confidence before God, Jesus shows here that it was his relationship to the marketplace that He was most interested in. And indeed, it proved to be a much bigger issue to the Lord than even his disciples could imagine. Tomorrow we’ll look at Jesus’’ interest in the marketplace of the world. So until then……

Stay On The Path!

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

What is it that God loves? Is it just our souls? Does He only love “us” but detests the world with all its sinfulness? After all, the Bible does say:

1 John 2:15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

So it appears that there is some definite conflict between God and His love and “the world”; so that loving the world conflicts with the “love of the Father”. This statement seems to stand in direct contradiction to Jesus’ own words in Jn 3:16. And there is no difference between the uses of the words, “love” and “world” in these two references. In both cases the Bible translates both uses as agape and kosmos. So there’’s no help in reconciling these two apparent contradictions, by citing the use of different Greek words. The fact is that God is saying, on one level, that He loves the world; but on another level He’’s saying that loving the world conflicts with His love.

The only place left for us to go for understanding this distinction, is to realize two things. That God does not love the corrupt condition of the world. And in fact, He hates it and doesn’’t want us loving it either.  And secondly, God, as Creator-Redeemer, has an over-arching love for the world He made and His original plan for it. His loathing for the results of Adam’’s fall is not unstable, so that it spills over into His righteous love for His Created purpose, and spoils it. God is not in conflict regarding the world. He may hate the evil but it doesn’’t interfere with Him loving, both us, and the world He made for us to rule.

He may hate the corrupt way that people rule the world, but He loves the purpose that He designed into our management of life. In short, there was more than “lost souls” that God saw in the world, and came to save.  He saw the very purpose He engineered into our being, when He made us out of the earth and placed us in it to rule it. God has never changed His mind about what He purposed in creation. He saw that it was “good” then, and the plan is still “good” in His eyes now. God loves more than just our souls. And Jesus came to save more than just our souls.

There is an old nasty religious notion out there that seems to find its way into the background of Christians’ worldview. And that is that God rolls up His sleeve, and with one hand holding His nose, He plunges His other hand into the sewage of the world, reaches into our bodies to pluck out souls, which He rescues from a detestable environment. We see God being interested only in the souls of men, and caring little about the life they are submerged in. In fact, the traditional religious ideology, has God in full retreat from the life of the world, as though Satan invented it, and He Himself is only interested in the spirits of men - and then, only if they hate the world as well.

There is certainly something to see in that the Bible says God loves the world, but then says that we shouldn’’t. Obviously God’’s love is able to have affection for the world without being influenced by the poison of its sin.  We on the other hand have a love that must be focused on God, and away from the world, so that it’s not poisoned by sin. So the only way we can love the world in a healthy way is filtered through our love for God. Loving God supremely, makes us holy enough to love the world without being overcome by the noxious fumes of it’s corruption.

The fact is that God has never abandoned His love for the world or His plan for us to rule it through our relationship with Him. Consider the amazing insight of Paul’’s letter to the Roman Christians:

Rom. 8:19 For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.

Rom. 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope

Rom. 8:21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Rom. 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.

This insight into God’’s purpose reveals that the scope of God’’s love and plan is far greater than the saving of souls. It encompasses the complete redemption of His original love for the world and our place in it as its rulers. So this pretty much blows away the abstract idea that God plucks our souls from life, discards the world as worthless, and replants us into some ethereal plane of existence (called Heaven), that bears no resemblance to the environment from which we were designed and taken. There certainly is a Heaven, but the Bible teaches that it is destined to be relocated on the Earth.

So if Jesus is the ultimate Answer for the world and not its executioner; if we are being saved to fulfill our purpose in the Earth and not just to escape it, then what should be our worldview? If there is something of value in life, and God wants to expose it to His redeeming influence, how shall we step around our hate for evil, to love what God wants to redeem?

Tomorrow we’ll take a deeper look, so until then……

Stay On The Path!

Gen. 2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

(REVIEW: taken from yesterday’s devotional, “Where Are You?”)

“In the flesh” does not describe being in your body, but rather the spiritual state of being cut off from God IN YOUR BODY. It’s as though your being (soul and spirit) has fallen down into a large box, with tall sides and no windows. That is being IN THE FLESH. People scoot along in life, from within their fleshy confines, colliding into one another, crying out from within, but seldom being understood or truly understanding. They are like prisoners separated by walls, building relationships with each other by tapping code on the fleshy walls of their cells. This picture of futility illustrates the dramatic comparison between what we have and what we were supposed to have - what we could have.

In Romans, Paul sees this dilemma precisely, and cries out for deliverance from it:

Rom. 7:24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

And though we live in this body, in the Holy Spirit, we are no longer confined, confused, unseen and unseeing. If you can grasp it; what once only the periscope of imagination considered, now Jesus has given us: lifting us from concealment to revelation, and from the Opinions of the Box to the Freedom of the Truth!

The First Couple had a largeness about them that was similar to the properties of a candle. Rather than a sealed container with boarded over eyes, their bodies were more like the wick of a candle. The prominent feature of their being wasn’t the fairness of their flesh, as is often depicted in children’s Sunday School pictures, but rather the radiance of their souls, ignited with the glory of God. Adam and Eve were “not ashamed” because they were not in the flesh. The phrase, “in the flesh”, has become a popular way for Christians to refer to being carnally minded. But in reality, the biblical concept of being “in the flesh” goes much deeper, and speaks to the very curse that sin brought upon us. Being “in the flesh” is literally having your soul/spirit, disconnected from God, and boxed up inside your body. In that state, the spiritual life and divine glory that once clothed Adam and Eve is stripped away and your flesh is all that you are now in touch with. Gone, is the state of spiritual awareness, innocence and sense of glory. So being “in the flesh” actually refers to the way we are arranged, as a result of sin. Rather than our souls being dominant and empowered with the glory of God, our bodies reign over our souls, and our souls exist blindly shackled to the cravings of our bodies.

All of Romans ch. 8 speaks powerfully to the truth that Jesus has literally lifted the believer from being in the flesh, into a new place of “being”. But let’s focus on this one verse:

Rom. 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

By saving us, Jesus has given us relocation. Before we could have our citizenship transferred from Earth to Heaven, we had to undergo a change of nature, because “fallen sinners” cannot enter Heaven.

1 Cor. 15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

Your relocation occurred first in your very being, as Jesus changed your nature. God raised your soul and spirit from its fleshy dungeon to His position of Sonship in Jesus. Infusing you with the Holy Spirit, He has literally taken you OUT OF THE BOX without taking you out of your body. In other words, He gave life and Light back to your soul and rearranged your being, so that you are NO LONGER IN THE FLESH.

Col. 2:10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:

Col. 2:11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:

Col. 2:12 Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.

Eph. 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:

The place where you “sit” speaks of the place of your authority.

Luke 10:19 Behold, I have given you authority…over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you.

Jesus gave you a positional relocation that is not just legal but it’s vital. Through the New Birth, you really do have a oneness connection with Christ. Your body is no longer authorized to act as jailer over your soul. When Jesus became your Savior, you entered a blood covenant with Him, as the Lord of your soul. In that relationship He has joined with you, as the Holy Spirit, and extended sonship status to you as a joint-heir to the Kingdom of God. And as a restored child of God, the full privileges of access to God’s Presence and blessings have come to you.

Rom. 8:16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

Rom. 8:17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

But as wonderful as all of this is, Christians still have a very difficult time grasping the truth that they are no longer “in the flesh”. Because we are living in our bodies and in a sin-toxic world, we still feel the temptations of the body. And through the language of our physical weaknesses, Satan speaks with all his diabolical effort to challenge our new Life and our Heavenly position. Remember what Jesus said:

John 8:44 …the devil…he is a liar, and the father of it.

Everything Jesus has said about the New Creation is true for you! You have undergone a positional change in Christ. You are no longer a prisoner of “The Box”. You are no loner “in the flesh”. You no longer need to be ashamed. Your soul has been washed in the blood of Jesus and clothed with sonship. Don’t let the devil chase you down with the nakedness of your old existence. It may take a process of time for the comprehension of your new life in Christ to sink in, but the reality of your change of nature is already a fact in Christ. You should defend your position against every claim of the devil. If you sin or fall short it doesn’t mean that you have been jettisoned from your heavenly relationship with Christ, and re-incarcerated in your flesh. Even though a moral failure may leave you feeling crushed, the truth is that your own conscience has sustained a bruise, your grip on His Word has been loosened, but His relation to you is unchanged. Don’t let the Accuser of the Brethern convince you into behaving like a “Box Dweller”. Repent; get up; and keep going. Why? Because you are NO LONGER IN THE FLESH…so don’t think and walk like an incarcerated sinner.

Rom. 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Rom. 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

Rom. 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.

Stay On The Path!

Gen. 3:8 They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

Gen. 3:9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”

(I am taking some creative literary license in describing Adam and Eve’s condition in the Garden before the fall.  However, the descriptions are based upon consideration of Biblical principles, in attempting to understand Man’s original state of being with God.)

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

Robed in the Glory of God, Adam had “Presence”. He was larger than his body. He was the crowning prince of Life; the Curator of Paradise.  The Garden of God was his to expand across the face of the Earth, at will. He was the Master of the world.  Walking in the glory of God, you could sense his approach before you saw his body.

But the inevitable event came to pass, and Adam, along with his wife, drank the life-quenching lie of Satan. His soul is dowsed with the fire extinguishing words of death: “Has God said?”  Adam and Eve immediately undergo the human equivalent of a nuclear catastrophe.  Look at the tremendous loss…consider the reduction in “being”; as God Himself enters the Garden and asks, “Where are you?  Why don’t I sense your presence?”  Now Adam is so dark and puny he can hide like a rabbit behind a bush!  Once the trees of the Garden could not conceal him.  Now even his own snuffed spirit can’t reveal him.  His body, once the wick of a candle, is now a bony sack of charred soul.  The flame is gone.

Today, reduced by sin to souls shriveled in fear and blindness, man isn’t even seen by those, looking straight into his eyes!  His body is a box of captivity, which his being has fallen down into.  It’s like the over-sized clothes of an adult, swallowing the body of a toddler.  Married people, sharing quarters, fortunes and trials, complain of not being seen by their life’s most intimate partner.  People look directly at us but can’t see us.  What kind of a Hell has sin delivered us into?!!  Our broken spirit is entombed in an unresponsive body that’s driven with beast-like impulses, by its own cravings.

The inability to make one’s self known, to see and understand others; the concealment of the soul from our understanding: all this is the tragic consequence of man’s separation from God.

John 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

John 1:22 Then said they unto him, Who art thou?… What sayest thou of thyself?

Luke 6:39 And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch?

All these statements, and so many more like them, are indications that man is in a terrible state of blindness and disconnect.  Man has gone from striding with irrepressible radiance, through the Garden of God, in perfect harmony with his purpose, to hiding, undetected in pathetic fear and confusion, behind a bush.  In short, sin has imprisoned man’s soul within his own flesh, alone and without God.

Rom. 8:8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

Rom. 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

“In the flesh” does not describe being in your body, but rather the spiritual state of being cut off from God while in your body.  It’s as though your being (soul and spirit) has fallen down into a large box, with tall sides and no windows. That is what is meant by being IN THE FLESH.  People “in the flesh”, scoot along in life, from within their carnal confines, colliding into one another, crying out from within, but seldom being understood or truly understanding.  They are like prisoners separated by walls, building relationships with each other by tapping code on the fleshy walls of their cells.  This picture of futility illustrates the dramatic comparison between what we have and what we were supposed to have - what we could have again.

In Romans, Paul sees this dilemma precisely, and cries out for deliverance from it:

Rom. 7:24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

In this outcry, that just nails exactly what the Curse of Sin is all about, Paul sets up the backdrop for revealing the entire Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Rom. 7:24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

Rom. 7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord…

Rom. 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

Eph. 2:1 And you hath he quickened (made alive), who were dead in trespasses and sins;

Eph. 2:5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened (made alive) us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)

People always proclaim, “You can’t put God in a Box!”  True enough.  But neither can you stop God from putting Himself in a box.  And that’s exactly what He did.  God got into this Box of Flesh with us.  He rescinded the sentence that confined us in it.  By the Life of His Spirit, He lifted us from its entombing effects and raised us up to a new, large and Heavenly position.

Eph. 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:

And though we live in this body, in the Holy Spirit, we are no longer confined, confused, unseen and unseeing.  If you can grasp it; what once only the periscope of imagination considered, Jesus has now given us: lifting us from concealment to revelation, and from the blindness of box-thinking to the Freedom of the Truth!

Stay On The Path!

John 1:22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”

John 1:23 He said, “I am A VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY OF THE LORD,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

Would to God that you might say of yourself, “I am a voice”. When the truth of Jesus becomes so clear, that in light of declaring it, everything else in life becomes insignificant by comparison. The truth that Jesus makes real to you makes everything else seem trivial. When Jesus’ Gospel first begins to shine in your life, it cast the world in a beautiful light, and you begin to enjoy everything around you with renewed meaning. But as the brightness of His word intensifies in your heart the world starts to wash out in the light. The attractions of the world start fading to the background at the emergence of a message.

You are becoming a Voice. Everything within you, – your skills, energy and passion are beginning to rally around a developing Word in your spirit. Let it arise. Let God bring it forth in you. With the zeal it causes in your heart you will undoubtedly make plenty of mistakes, but God will be with you. He will teach you. And as long as you remain passionately devoted and humbly submitted to Him, none of your shortcomings or enemies will prevail against you. You won’’t be perfect, but you will be passionate. You won’’t be compulsive, but you will be compelled.

The life of a Voice is a focused life. For you, everything is in the Word God has given you: the answers, the provisions, the grace, and the success. Your feet, your hands, your pursuits your money, will all be converted to the cause of your Voice. Everything will be invested in the utterance with which you’’ve been entrusted.

You will begin to attract attention from people who never looked at you before. And you will begin to make enemies who were previously unaffected by you. The Word in your Voice is a lightening rod. It draws the faith of searching souls and the resentment of controllers who are threatened by you.

Nehemiah was such a man. He lived 450 years BC and served as cupbearer to Artaxerxes, King of Persia, nearly 1000 miles from his homeland in Judah. His life was in a definite set pattern. Yet upon hearing that Jerusalem was in ruins, Nehemiah’’s heart began to burn as the Word of God stirred within him. The Lord began to raise up His Word of Restoration within Nehemiah, and Nehemiah began to fast and pray for the restoration of the walls of Jerusalem. He could have dismissed the divine dealings, – rationalizing that someone closer and better suited should bear this concern. In a short period of time God had arranged for Nehemiah to be sent, with the King’’s blessing, to restore the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiah had found his voice. And he would need it. Because when he reached Jerusalem the broken state of the walls wasn’’t nearly as severe as the broken condition of the Jews who lived there. So Nehemiah opened his mouth with all the passion God had been percolating inside of him, and he rallied the people together to work. You can read about it in Neh. chs. 1-6.

This would be a perfect fairy tale except, like all similar conditions in real life; there was great opposition to change. There were non-Israeli leaders who had enjoyed a vested interest in the dilapidated condition of the Jews. These men vehemently opposed, objected, coerced and even threatened Nehemiah, along with any who helped him. Suddenly Nehemiah, The Voice, found himself living an entirely different life, in an adventure that earned him serious new enemies. And when you allow God’’s words in you to become that prominent, that they rise up and take you with them, you too will find yourself following the Voice God has germinated within you.

The new enemies Nehemiah had attracted sent messengers to him as he led the people up on the walls in the rebuilding project. They tempted him to come down and meet with them – planning to ambush him. But this is what Nehemiah, The Voice, said to them:

Neh. 6:2 that Sanballat and Geshem sent a message to me, saying, “Come, let us meet together at Chephirim in the plain of Ono.” But they were planning to harm me.

Neh. 6:3 So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?”

Neh. 6:4 And they sent messages to me four times in this manner, and I answered them in the same way.

When you find your Voice, you too will become a different person. The opinions and urgencies of others will no longer command your attention. You will serve a higher purpose and follow a clearer path. Nehemiah completed the wall in an amazingly brief period, and went on to lead the people through revival, to a new level of faith and living. This obscure cupbearer to a foreign king, is credited with saving the nation of Israel from certain extinction; all because he found his voice. He faced a people drowning in defeat and complicity. He withstood enemies of change and endangered his semi-comfortable life for a cause that he allowed God to stir him up over, but could have ignored. Nehemiah is the perfect example of the Voice of God being raised in a man. Why? Because the mission wasn’t forced upon him. The “problem” wasn’’t threatening him, per se. Yet Nehemiah let God stir His concerns in his heart. Nehemiah became God’’s servant in the matter, and wasn’’t trapped by circumstance, to have to react. Instead he was compelled by divine unction to become A Voice.

The world today needs Voices from God.

Stay On The Path!

John 1:22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”

John 1:23 He said, “I am A VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY OF THE LORD,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

To have a voice the world will hear you must understand your value in Christ.Then you must possess a vision that compels you with a sense of purpose. God speaks to the world through us. And the message He expresses must have more than words; it must convey itself in a living messenger. Our life must speak.

Every Christian must realize that there is a purpose hidden in their salvation. God has laid hold of them so that they can lay hold of it:

Phil. 3:12 …but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that (purpose) for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

There is a “that (purpose)” behind the saving of every Christian.  And there can be no greater sense of purpose than that of finding your Voice and fulfilling it. To find your Voice you must find your Vision. And finding your vision is not a quest, it’s a resolution.  Jesus brought your Vision with Him when He entered your life. You don’’t seek it, you pursue it. You don’’t search for it, you decide upon it. It’’s specific. You lay hold to it. Your vision is not a revelation, it’s a decision.

That vision comes into focus from within you. For some it’s a slow evolution; yet for others it can be a spontaneous eruption. But whether a slow boil or flash flood produces your vision, one thing is always true: it is THERE waiting to be acted up.And since your vision comes from God, you must go to God to understand it – to fulfill it. Believe me when I say, you will NEED God when you begin to conceive of your vision, because it is HUGE – much larger than you. God always gives us a vision that big for 2 reasons:

1. Because it makes us have to go to Him for it’s fulfillment, and

2. Because it stretches us beyond failure, beyond our own self-reliance

As you begin to make sacrifices in the pursuit of the vision God put in you, transformation will occur. Every time you reach the limits of your own leash and cry to go farther, it will cost you a little more of your independence. You will leave more self-centeredness behind to enter a new phase of maturity.  So that from the authority of new life, gained by the death of the old life, your Voice will emerge.

Heb. 11:24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter;

Heb. 11:25 choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin;

Heb. 11:26 considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.

Heb. 11:27 By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen.

These were the steps Moses took as he reached beyond himself to lay hold of the vision God placed within him. The vision changed him. Dramatically.  Moses already had greatness in the eyes of men, but he followed a vision of greatness that God put in his heart.

Acts 7:22 “And Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds.

Acts 7:23 “But when he was approaching the age of forty, it entered his mind to visit his brethren, the sons of Israel.

Acts 7:24 “And when he saw one of them being treated unjustly, he defended him and took vengeance for the oppressed by striking down the Egyptian.

Acts 7:25 “And he supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him; but they did not understand.

Acts 7:26 “And on the following day he appeared to them as they were fighting together, and he tried to reconcile them in peace, saying, ‘Men, you are brethren, why do you injure one another?’

Acts 7:27 “But the one who was injuring his neighbor pushed him away, saying,‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?

Acts 7:28 ‘You do not mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday, do you?’

Acts 7:29 “And at this remark Moses fled, and became an alien in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.

Acts 7:30 “And after forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning thorn bush.

Here is the story of man broken and transformed by his vision. And obviously his transformation involved a bit of personal zeal and tragic failure.  But that didn’’t kill the vision. And I’’m not convinced that it delayed it either.  When a vision is big enough you’’ll change your life, friends, work and habits to fulfill it.  If you’’re not willing to do that then the vision isn’’t big enough.

Moses eventually found his Voice. And what a Voice it was: he was the Oracle of God to his generation. And when his Voice came, Moses knew for certain, his value in God.  And so far as having a vision, Moses had bid his entire life on it, –failed to achieve it, –and when God finally handed it to him, Moses, in fear and trembling became totally dependent upon God. By the time he got back to Egypt, Moses was the vision. He wasn’’t pursuing it, he was being it.

In your life, there may not be a multitude of slaves that God wants you to lead across a desert…, or maybe there is.

Stay On The Path!

John 1:22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”

John 1:23 He said, “I am A VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY OF THE LORD,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

To have a Voice, one the world will hear, requires two things:

Value and a Vision

From a sense of personal Value we speak with confidence that we are braced against the grace of Jesus Christ. We are secured in the knowledge that God’’s love for us authorizes our right to speak – gives us a “say-so”. Secondly we must derive our Voice from a Vision; one that reveals a sense of personal purpose: a kind of divine calling. Secured with Value and led forth with Vision, our personal interest then becomes stretched beyond self, and we are able to speak with divine authority, to things greater than us. But without being firmly rooted in God’’s evaluation of yourself, and without being led up by His Vision, you simply become like all the people of the world, who speak of matters beyond themselves, but cannot seem to do so without injecting “Self” into their observations. They are simply prattlers, exercising their opinions without any divine authority. Without Value and Vision, people who think they have a Voice must base it in academic authority, popularity or the talent of talking. But in the end they are all lumped together with those who simply speak among themselves, changing nothing.

Jesus, on the other hand, and those who have become His oracles, speak to the world from a totally different place. And the difference is apparent:

Matt. 7:28 When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching;

Matt. 7:29 for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

Luke 4:22 And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph’s son?

To find your Voice you must find your Vision. The beginning of every Christian Vision is in the general context of the Great Commission:

Matt. 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

Matt. 28:20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The Vision for every Christian life is found somewhere within the general purpose of Disciple-Making. Your vision is that particular way in which you will make the Gospel known to the world. It beats within your heart and releases passion whenever you focus upon it. Though your vocation may be that of a house painter, entertainer or business owner, that does not define or limit your vision. Many people struggle, trying to reconcile their vocation with their vision, thinking that they must work in the Ministry to fulfill the call of God. But Vision and Vocation do not necessarily need to be at odds.

Col. 3:23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,

Back in the 1970s, when I was a young Pastor in Connecticut, there was a very prominent Christian leader who was being used of the Lord to influence thousands of people for Christ. He crossed all denominational lines, speaking to churches, conferences and groups. This man was not a minister but a donut maker. And the entire time he was fulfilling his Vision and being a Voice to that region, he kept making his donuts. His example was very powerful precisely because he was a donut-making servant of God. He had a Vision of what God wanted him to do and didn’’t let the demands of his vocational responsibilities limit it. Rather instead of trying to keep them separate, he simply overlaid his vision on top of his vocation.

Every Christian must realize that there is a purpose for their salvation. God has apprehended them and there is a reason for it:

Phil. 3:12 …but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that (purpose) for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

There is a “that (purpose)” behind the saving of every Christian. And there can be not greater sense of fulfillment than that of finding your Voice and fulfilling it. To find your Voice you must find your Vision. And finding your vision is not a quest, it’’s a resolution. Jesus brought your Vision with Him when He entered your life. You don’’t seek it, you pursue it. You don’’t search for it, you decide upon it. It’’s specific.  You lay hold to it. Your vision is not a revelation, it’’s a decision.

More tomorrow, so until then…

Stay On The Path!

John 1:22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”

John 1:23 He said, “I am A VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY OF THE LORD,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

Satan wages an effective battle against the Church simply by inspiring a sense of insignificance in those who believe the Gospel. We MUST help you discover your value to God. As simply as I can state this, the point must be nailed down:

God most definitely has a profound interest in you knowing how valuable you are to Him.

And the way to capture the revelation of your value is to let God tell you how much he loves YOU. Go directly to Him in a prayer-quest. Ask Him to open your heart and your comprehension. Ask Him to tell you Himself, who you are to Him. Set your heart to seek God. Put yourself on a fast and push everything else to the background. And go forth to cast your life upon His altar. Push past all the voices of life – go out into the wilderness and seek Him as your refuge. He will meet you there.

Psa. 27:7 Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me.

Psa. 27:8 When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek.

If this sounds simplistic just remember that His voice brought life to all things. When His “still small voice” breaks forth into your conscious mind it blows away the darkness and lies that bind your soul. When he speaks it’s nothing like the words of men. When He speaks to you the benefits of His healing grace are imparted. He instills value in your conscience with His Word. Consider the words of a man who let God love him, and drew his destiny from that love:

Psa. 43:3 O send out Thy light and Thy truth, let them lead me; Let them bring me to Thy holy hill, And to Thy dwelling places.

Psa. 43:4 Then I will go to the altar of God, To God my exceeding joy; And upon the lyre I shall praise Thee, O God, my God.

Psa. 43:5 Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him,The help of my countenance, and my God.

David’’s soul was in despair. He couldn’’t catch a break. Despite his best intentions and efforts everything went against him. He felt worthless, rejected and that he had no “Voice” of any significance. But David also knew that his soul was in trouble.  He knew he was depressed with a deflated sense of worth and value.Perhaps you see no value in your life. King David was there, where you now are. And he knew that a fresh perspective, a few days off, or a “rest” weren’t going to heal this brokenness. He knew where he had to go to heal his soul. He knew he needed to recapture his sense of Value and NO ONE BUT GOD could give that to him.

Psa. 43:3 O send out Thy light and Thy truth, let them lead me; Let them bring me to Thy holy hill, And to Thy dwelling places.

That’s where YOU must go: to God’’s “holy hill, and to Thy dwelling places.” Determine to go on a prayer-quest, to bring your malnourished soul to The Healer – the One Who loves you. For He has already sent out His “Light and Truth” to find you and bring you to His holy hill, His dwelling place.

We have made a costly error in measuring our value through life’’s experiences.  Our relationships, families, marriages, skills, successes, failures, popularity, respect of others, are not meant to be places we go to get a sense of value. Our personal value can only come from embracing what our Creator/Redeemer has said personally to us. He alone is “The help of my countenance, and my God”.

Before you can find your “Voice” you must find your Value.

Stay On The Path!

John 1:22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”

John 1:23 He said, “I am A VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY OF THE LORD,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

In all the experiences through which people search for meaning; of all the skills we develop to achieve fulfillment; none will free us from inner frustration, until we find our Voice in God. Your Creator has made you as a living message, and your life should say something. In fact your life is saying something right now.But it may not be speaking the powerful message of redemption. Yet that is the very message the Lord entered the world with which to free us. Lives lived in the affect of His redeeming love speak sweetly and powerfully to the world. You’’re to be His oracle, His living epistle.

1 Pet. 4:11 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God…that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ…

When people have found their voice they have found more than a message, they have found themselves. In order to have your voice you must have a sense of your own value and a view of purpose. Value and Purpose come together in you to create a spiritual epiphany and focus your voice. In the simplest terms, your voice is what your life is saying to the world when everything within you comes together in a common purpose. Most people never consider that their life should even say anything. It’’s nearly impossible to achieve a true state of spiritual wellbeing and contentment by acquiring things, knowledge or experiences.Not until we begin to view the worth of our lives in terms of giving out to the world – finding our voice – can we start to live in a state of godly comfort.  Jesus taught the receiving, gaining, was achieved by giving. In His kingdom the greatest lives are lived by servants. Everything in them points toward a message, and they are ever aware of it. It’s a whole different way of negotiating the terms of their existence.

To find your voice you need 2 things: a Word and Unction. Both of these come from within you but they aren’t created by you. They’’re God inspired and you have to do business with Him to get them.

A Word…

What’’s YOUR word? God is always forming His Word in us. The Holy Spirit is ever at work, making real to us the Words of Life. Our conformity to His word in us produces a living message. That becomes your “say-so” – the authority of “your voice”.  Jesus had this distinction. Paul had it. Every Christian who has ever gone forth in life with a message in their heart from the Lord has had it. It comes from knowing what Jesus has said.…

Heb. 13:5 …for He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,”

Heb. 13:6 so that we confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What shall man do to me?”

His “saying” becomes the basis for our confident say-so. What the Holy Spirit speaks to you becomes YOUR word.

Paul used the phrase “my Gospel” in Ro. 2:16 in referring to the Gospel he preached. The fact is that the Holy Spirit had revealed the wondrous insights of the Gospel to Paul so that it became his Word.

An Unction…

You need more than a Word; you need the power of utterance – the anointing to speak it. Some call it passion but it transcends emotion and springs from the indwelling power of God. Unction isn’’t great speaking skills it’s the presence of Heaven in your words. It can’’t be learned; it’’s caught, not taught. Paul, with all his expert oratory ability and training prayed for unction:

Eph. 6:19 and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,

Eph. 6:20 for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

When Unction has been united with a Word in your life, to produce a message in you, it’’s very hard to do anything else but be “the Voice”.

A young man asked an old preacher how he might know if God really wanted him to preach or not. The old oracle simply answered, “If you can do anything else, then do it.”

Stay On The Path!

John 1:22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”

John 1:23 He said, “I am A VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY OF THE LORD,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

All the men and women that God used had a “Voice”. Most of them hadn’’t found their voice until God took hold of them. When God found them, some were fearful, like Gideon. Some were insecure, like Moses. Some had been deceived, like Paul.  Some were indifferent and unavailable, like Esther. Yet in the Hands of God, each one found their unique voice, through which they spoke to their world. There is nothing quite like speaking to the world and having the world listen. They certainly will not all agree, but you won’t be ignored. It is no small honor to be the voice of God’’s message. There is quite possibly nothing else in life that can compare.

1 Pet. 4:11 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God…that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ…

One who is given a voice in the Hands of God doesn’’t just speak to the world from behind pulpits. In fact, most of the men and women who spoke God’’s messages to their generation did so within the flow of life’’s commonly traveled roads. The world isn’’t going to come to church, so God gives people in the church a voice and sends them into their the world.

In all that we seek to receive in church we should seek to obtain a voice.

It’’s good to be a part of church and come for understanding, refreshing, even correction. But in all that we reach for in church, how many of us come seeking to find our “Voice”?

Eph. 6:19 And (pray) for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

Eph. 6:20 For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

When you begin to find your voice your path narrows – options fade – but the road ahead becomes more clear. For you find your voice on the same path that you discover your value and find true purpose.

When the Pharisees asked John the Baptist to give an accounting of himself he quoted Isaiah 40:3 in response:

The voice of him that cries in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Jesus had refered to John saying:

Luke 7:28 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist

I’’ve always been deeply impressed that the man Jesus cited as the greatest Prophet of the Old Testament had distilled his identity down to that of “The Voice”. Not The Body, The Brain, The Heart, The Hand, or any other function. But he was elevated to the high status of “greatest among those born” by allowing his life to be guided under the Hand of God to become an oracle.

Finding your voice and becoming an oracle of God is a concept shrouded in misunderstanding and fantasy.You would imagine some mystical process that fashions people into a strange and disconnected pilgrim.What could be more damaging to the Gospel than to associate the business of delivering God’s words with bizarre people. We have also made a terrible mistake leaving the job of speaking to the world for God, in the hands of professional clergy. That leaves the vast majority of Christians simply focusing on “living right” in a lost world. They never consider that there is a voice within them waiting to be awakened by the Hand of God. The most common places of their daily lives are the very paths God desires to enter and meet people.If the world only hears from God by the voice of professional preachers, where then will it learn of His love for them? The world needs for you to find your voice. Tomorrow we’ll begin to look at what goes into finding your voice.

Stay On The Path!

Heb. 2:10 For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

God’s purpose in creation can be seen in our transition from knowing God as Creator to meeting Him as Father. The phrase, “bringing many sons unto glory”, is one of those great statements of purpose that open a highway to the Throne of God. It cuts through all the lesser explanations for our salvation and presents us with the BIG PICTURE: SONSHIP. It was never God’s intention that we should be born a man and die a grocer. All the forces of Hell and all the influences of life, work together to throw a blanket of confusion over our heads. To prevent us from seeing “our glory”. I know. It sounds strange to speak of “our glory”, when we should be praising the glory of God. But what is the glory of God?

Eph. 1:17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:

Eph. 1:18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints (God’s people…

God created glory into everything He made. And the glory of each created thing is it’s function. The glory of the eagle is to fly. The glory of the Salmon is to swim. And the glory of man is to fellowship with God, and partner with Him in ruling over His creation. That is what we were designed to do. Everything about us - our ability to dream, our desire for passion, our drive to excel, our need for intimacy; these are all engineered into us to enable us to walk with God. And these very qualities drive us into futility and the frustration of unfulfillment, when we walk apart from God. The reason for this is simple.

Every glory has it’s environment that God created in which it will function. Take the creature out of his environment and his glory will not function. Eagles cannot swim under water. Their environment is the sky. The Salmon won’t survive in the air, much less swim in the sky. The Salmon looks pathetic and defeated in the air, but put him in the river and watch his glory in action. Likewise man was designed to be gloriously effective in a certain environment. That environment is the Presence of God. The physical location of that environment was originally the “Garden”.

Eze. 28:13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God;

And this environment of fellowship between God and His man, was to expand as man exercised His glory.

Gen. 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

But man took himself out of the presence of God. He stepped into a world of blindness and confusion. He became like the fish-out-of-water, gasping and flailing for survival rather than living powerfuly in glory. When we, in the environs of His Presence, walk in our glory, exhibiting our God-given abilities, IT GLORIFIES GOD!! It reflects back on the Creator.

So at this point let’s answer the question we opened up with, “But what is the glory of God?” It is the reflection of His greatness, the revelation of His purpose. All creation speaks of His order and greatness, BUT WE reveal His deep personal attributes and purpose, which is LOVE. God made us, risking the rebellion we’d commit and the mess we’d produce, because LOVE can settle for nothing less than our creation. And LOVE will provide nothing less than our salvation, to redeem our fall. LOVE chased us. LOVE paid the price to purchase us back from the claims of sin.

Now hear this, if nothing else has rung a bell of revelation in you yet: In order to bring us back to glory…back into our environment…back to our function…the Father made us sons of God.

Heb. 2:10 For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

This elevation to Sonship is the very original purpose of our creation. This is the design of LOVE.

1 John 3:1 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

You will never be more complete in any relationship than you are as a child of your Heavenly Father. You will never coordinate your skills, passions and mental powers more perfectly than when you are walking with your Heavenly Father. Through Paul the Apostle and Mother Theresa and all the thousands of unnamed men and women who have radiated the glories of God, whose sacrificial virtues exalted the Savior, the world has seen the flickering lights of glory from the doorway of Jesus.

Rev. 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

More tomorrow…

Stay On The Path!

Luke 23:34 Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

Today the world is under the Age of Grace. Jesus not only shocked the religious leaders of His day by announcing to people that their sins were forgiven, but He also declared that He had not come into the world to judge the world at this time.

John 12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

John 12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.

Jesus made clear that His present mission was to offer salvation to a sin-cursed world. So when He hung up on the cross, with open arms and cried, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do!”, He was issuing the defining sentiment of a whole new dispensation. That was not merely a passionate expression of the moment. It was the covenantal decree for an age! Jesus, with that cry, in that very moment; representing God and representing man, and possessing the perfect right to establish divine policy; spoke forth the anthem of the New Blood Covenant; and established the attitude of God in relation to man. His words form the ground of ministry, upon which God will anoint men, and upon which he will hear their petitions.

2 Cor. 5:19 To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

Jesus had made clear that we were entering the times of refreshing, when God would turn His heart of grace towards sinners, and extend, with great divine patience, His Hand of salvation. Judgements would be withheld, so that the skittish hearts of those dwelling in the dark, might have boldness to come out into the Light. Do not diminish the tremendous ramifications of this statement:

“…not imputing their trespasses unto them…”

It is almost hard to believe what this statement is suggesting. Though God is not now condoning sin, nor is He going to allow it to go unpunished; but, in this statement we have the clear indication that God is withholding judgment of sin until a later time. But even more astounding is the means by which God is extending His grace.

Matt. 18:18 Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Matt. 18:19 Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.

Matt. 18:20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

The entire mechanism of this ambassadorial mission of mercy from Heaven to Earth, rests upon the shoulders of the redeemed former slaves of sin. Heaven will now stand on the orders of men acting as its representatives upon the Earth!  We have been given the right and responsibility to extend God’s forgiveness of sins to others. While it’s not my purpose here to go into the conditions or limitations of this authority, the fact that we have this power is indisputable in scripture. We can stand as the Lord’s intercessors, on the behalf of the lost and guilty, and not only plead their pardon, but declare it. It infuriated the Pharisees when they saw Jesus decree the pardon of sins over people who did not appear to have undergone a “proper religious repentance”. And that precise ministry of reconciliation has been given to us.

We have not, however, begun to understand the depth of our calling and the power of our ambassadorship. We can’t exercise an authority that we don’t understand. While bound in oneness to the Father through Christ in a fabulous New Covenant, most Christians live in an Old Covenant mentality of legalism and condemnation. Most Christians still don’t accept their own forgiveness and the access Jesus gives them to God’s Throne, much less, the authority they have to forgive the sins of others.

Take a look at Jesus’ words to the disciples, during an appearance, after His resurrection.

John 20:21 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

John 20:22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

John 20:23 Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; andwhose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

Under the direction of the Holy Spirit, we as recipients of His forgiving grace, are to be the very ones who act as His agents in dispensing it to others.

All of this is why Jesus calls us the “Salt of the Earth”. Christians who are armed with the advanced knowledge of their covenant authority, can assert themselves as agents of the grace of God in the face of a sinning world. And we have a preserving effect upon a culture that would otherwise rot without the influence of “Salt”. When we enter a community as Christ’s Ambassadors, we bring God’s favor to them if they receive us. Then grace begins to work, souls are saved, lives delivered and healed and divine blessing fills every available place where we are welcomed. I wonder if you knew you had that much influence with God? I’m convinced that we have more faith in the power of sin than we do in our own authority to extend forgiveness.

Abraham and Moses did it for the sinners of their day. How much more can we, who are the sanctioned Ambassadors of Christ, in the world today? They did it utilizing nothing more than their own relationship with God. We have the full authority of Sonship. Determined believers who KNOW their position and refuse to be swayed, can bring the visitation of God’s grace upon a dark land, or maintain the patient favor of God in a compromised society. God had agreed with Abraham not to destroy Sodom if only 10 righteous were found in the city. What is amazing is that God was on His way to destroy the city when Abraham turned Him around! Had Abraham taken the position that many believers do today, he probably would have said something like, “I figured they were gonna get judged, the way they were going at it in there. I wonder what took God so long?” And God would have moved right in and judged the city. But Abraham stopped Him. It was the influence of Abraham’s relationship with God, that made the difference.

Sure our society sees it’s share of corruption. How much do you think God sees? Yet He looks more to the blood of His Son, than all the failings of man. We’re ready to walk off and let the fire start reigning from the sky, as though we were the ones being crucified. Yet it was Jesus Who spoke out from the cross, those words which bind the forgiving mercy of God to Earth, wherever enforced by interceding Christians:

“…Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.…”

Stay On The Path!

Mark 7:24 And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid.

Mark 7:25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:

Mark 7:26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.

Mark 7:27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the childrenís bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.

Mark 7:28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the childrenís crumbs.

Mark 7:29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.

Mark 7:30 And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.

Welcome To The Light-Washed Path,

Faith that is unwaveringly fixed upon Jesus Himself can overcome ANY disqualification!

Jesus came for the disqualified. The woman in this story had no basis, under Old Testament Law, to obtain anything from the Jewish Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. But fortunately for her - and for us - Jesus is Lord, Creator and Redeemer of all the world. A direct appeal to Him, that bypasses all regular religious prescriptions, is possible. But it is only possible in that boundless realm called FAITH. Faith is the material of Heaven’s throne. It’s the by-product of God’s entry into the skeptical world. From the outside, what looks like Faith in Jesus, on the inside, is simply REALITY. It only looks like faith to those who don’t see reality.

Heb. 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidenceof things not seen.

Never ever, forget that Jesus is not the conductor of a Bible quiz. He is Savior, Lord and Loving Healer. You may have gotten the buzzer at every attempt to receive from God on the basis of your performance. So you probably have some things to work on. BUT, on the issue of receiving what you need from the Lord, remember, disqualification is not denial. If you are disqualified on all grounds, FAITH in Jesus is the one basis that God will hear. I’m talking about the kind of faith that KNOWS that God is good even if you’re not. This is faith that knows that approaching Jesus on basis of WHO He is instead of who you are, will always get you farther with God.

Mark 7:28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord (I am a dog): yet the dogs under the table eat of the childrenís crumbs.

Rom. 8:3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, Goddid: sending His own Son…

The Faith that’s based in Who Jesus is won’t take “No” for an answer, because it KNOWS that the Lord is essentially good and a Responder to faith, in spite of religious disqualifications. Faith is the persistent, unrelenting acknowledgment of what it knows to be real.

Jesus very often humbles the soul that seeks His Hand.

Mark 7:27 But Jesus said unto her…..it is not meet to take the childrenís bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.

But He does this in order to peel away any diluting pride and ego, so that the pure concentration of faith can come forth. In other words, He was helping the woman to bring herself to a point of power in her faith. The kind of power that transcends the prejudices and disqualifications of the world.

So when you really need help from God, but you have used up all your “get out of jail free” cards; and you don’t have any elevation, rights, or position, upon which to launch your claim before God; simply acknowledge your lowly condition and stake your claim in the fertile soil of the merciful promises of Jesus, from which even the disqualified are fed.

Mark 7:29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.

Stay On The Path!