The Word of Truth Ministries
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Frustrating the
Grace of God in |
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I do not frustrate
the grace of God. During the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, they called the oppressed
and backslidden people of God back to God. They saw that the people
of God had married strange women and begotten children by them, they
had let the upkeep of the temple go down, and they had simply
backslidden from God's word. So Ezra, moved by God, spoke to the
people and declared what God required, and the people measured up to
God's requirements. The way of Satan is always the same; if you have not studied the word of God sufficiently, you cannot correctly discern his ways. The adversaries of God's people brought accusations against the people of God to Kings Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes to frustrate them and slow the rebuilding of the house of God. And they did weaken the hand of God's people and slowed their efforts in rebuilding God's house. [Ezra 4 &5] That was the old, but it functions as a teacher for us in this New Testament Church so we not make the same mistakes or other needless mistakes. It shows us that we can allow others to frustrate us in doing God's word and work. Sometimes those others may be deceptive ministers (and there are many who have the form of godliness but deny the power thereof), uninformed and uninfluenced by the word of God Christians who speak things they should not speak, and sometimes we can be our own adversary. We must guard ourselves against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to do that we must know God's word, which teaches us how to discern Satan and all his works and workers. Not being able to discern Satan is very dangerous for those attempting to live for God and do the work of God. Oftentimes we frustrate (block) the blessings of God in our own lives because of our ignorance and because we cater to our flesh rather than keeping it under subjection. Two areas where modern day Christians regularly block the grace of God from flowing in their lives are life and health and a second area is our ignorance. In the book of Psalms 90, the prayer of Moses, we are told that "...the days of our years are three-score years and ten; and if by reason of strength, they be fourscore years, yet is their strength and sorrow...."[Psa. 90:10] Now this scripture seems to be God's word that we are to see at least 70-years of life on the earth under normal circumstances and possibly more. But many Christians have so frustrated the plan of God for their lives that they are dying before their time. Solomon asked the rhetorical question, “Why should you die before your time?” [Eccl.7: 17] This question implies that one need not reach the allotted time God has given, but one can cut that time short. There are a number of ways that can be done, but for most Christians the number one way is sin; I want to cite a type of sin that has passed under their perceptive radar. As I was out exercising one day, an older man was resting as I passed him. He remarked that he was trying to catch his breath, and I assured him that I understood. But I thought about him; he was not obese as he appeared to me, but he was exercising to get his body in some type of health--that is what exercise is about. Yet there are many Christians who have totally overlooked this aspect of maintaining the temple of God that their bodies are. And many think because eating is not a sin, as opposed to what they did when they were sinners, they can now eat obsessively, but that is the sin of gluttony. Resultantly, they are over-weight and think nothing about that situation of their temples. In short, like the people of God during Ezra and Nehemiah's time, they let the temple of God go into disrepair. Paul writes to the church, saying that each of our bodies is the temple of God and if we defile the temple of God, God will destroy us. [1 Cor.3:16-17] This temple that God has given us is marvelously made and God hovers over us to the point that both Job and David asked why is man so important to God. Their inquiry shows that God is particular about what man does and how he does it. That is because of how wondrously made we are and what God has deposited within us. [Job 7:17; Psa 8:4] Many people and many saints have no idea of the power they actually have; power resident in these bodies that God has made and in these temples that He inhabits, if you are a child of God. There is so much power God has placed in us from creation that is still within us if we reach for it. But most will limit themselves by a worldly statement of limitations. When my son was going through basic training in the Marines, he would call and say, "Dad, I don't think I can do this." And I would assure him that the ability and power were in him and that he has not really taped into the reservoir within his being. After awhile he started seeing what I was talking about and forced his body to measure up. So many Christians do not know what God has already given them, and since they don't know what power they have they do not use it. Many are asking for more, and God is telling them the same thing he told Moses: Use what is in your hand, Moses. The stick is enough; use it. God is not going to give us more until we use what we already have. Some Christians are ignorant not only to what power they have but ignorant about how to maintain what they have--how to possess their vessels/temples. Saints in light are not people who live to eat (overeaters) they eat to live and do not harm their vessels by gluttony. But saints not in light will not restrain themselves when it comes to food. They see nothing wrong with eating and eating and eating beyond their need and capacity. As a result, they smother these marvelous bodies God has given us with gluttony and don't see that act as sin. They are frustrating God's grace because they bring upon their bodies sicknesses they are not supposed to have. They smother good health for bad health by overeating and not exercising; then they ask God to heal them, and when He doesn't they give good money to a doctor. But God has a better way still: Be wise as serpents but harmless as doves. [Mat. 10:16] God has said to his people in so many ways to be wise, yet many persist in ignorance and often think that they are pleasing to God. They place upon themselves a fraudulent attitude of humility that is not humility at all; instead it is a failure to obey God to seek knowledge and wisdom and understanding. [Prov. 1: 22-23; 4:7; Hosa 4:6] They would have none of it. There is no effort to better themselves in any way--spiritually or educationally. Yet God requires both! The bodies that God has made will heal themselves if we treat them the correct way. But when we overeat and go to bed; when we overeat and fail to exercise but just sit and watch TV; when we overeat and fail to fast; when we overeat and fail to diet, these bodies will take on diseases--diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, strokes, heart attacks, etc. And how many of God's people are afflicted with these ailments, as they frustrate the grace of God and work toward dying before their allotted time? Many. I am aware that these types of hard godly truths offend many of God's people, but they are God's inconvenient truths to mankind, and they need to be told. Ezra saw a truth of God that had been over looked and he prophesied that truth; he told the people that they had to put away their unlawful marriages and other sins. That was not what the people wanted, but it was what God demanded. Study the writings in this ministry, and you will see that the truths I tell are life-saving truths that will bring you into the good graces and perfect will of God. Saints in light are never self-deceived or fooled by self-serving ministers, for they, as the scriptures instruct, examine themselves by the rightly-divided word of God to see if they are in the faith. God wants to bless us; God does not want us to have all of these sicknesses to come upon us, but we bring many of them upon ourselves. Saints in light are those who strive for mastery, and Paul says that they are temperate in all things. [1Cor. 9:25] Eating is one of those things. I like key lime and lemon pies, but I don't eat them frequently even though I like them and they are available; I must be temperate in all things. This temple of God, which He lives in, must be preserved and maintained so that the blessings of God can be received as they are given by God, otherwise I frustrate the grace of God. So we must draw near to God by obeying his word and He will draw near to us by blessing us. [James 4:8] Indeed, Jesus said, "It's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." [Luke 12:32] He wants to give to his children, but there are conditions to His giving. Listen again as Jesus says, "Whatever you ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it." [John 14:13-14] How much more explicit must he be than that? Clearly, this is a God eager to bless those who walk uprightly before him. If we ask God for health, which is a wise request instead of many of the foolish things being requested of God, we then must make it possible. That means that we cannot linger at the table overeating these bodies into bad health. We must be temperate; we must also exercise so the body will heal itself and stay healthy. God has made these bodies so wondrously and marvelously that they will do just that. Of course, the body will initially rebel; it is like a child that must be forced to consume the right foods for the nourishment of the body. Forcing the body to exercise is not going to be pleasant, but haven't you over-pleasured your bodies long enough already? Treat it like the child it is--a little bit at a time until it is up to adult speed. And do not listen to weakened ideas about this is just oldness. Moses was a 120 and was of the same strength. We make excuses for everything. Those excuses will stop the blessings of God from flowing in your life. Why eat, sit around and sleep until you die? Even the four leprous men sitting at the entrance to Samaria saw the folly in that scheme of things; they asked themselves, "Why sit here until we die?" They took a chance and were willing to risk their lives to change their situation. Are you frustrating the grace of God in your life? God has a prescription for blessing, and He will bless only his way, not yours. [Isa. 55:7-9] It is easy to do nothing, but you will die in your sickness and sin doing nothing! You will die before your time and frustrate the blessing of God for your life. God's people are also suffering from deadening ignorance, yet Christ is made unto us wisdom and sanctification. [1 Cor1:30] And God has said that he destroys his people because of their ignorance. [Hos. 4:6] Contrary to someone's notion about ignorance and godliness, there is no holiness in ignorance. Instead there is great danger in ignorance. Examine this irony: we claim to be Sons of God (God who is all-powerful, all-knowing) but we are among some of the most unlearned of all people, and we are being destroyed because of that very ignorance! Our claim of being godly must be a bogus one because no one traveling in the company of wise men can remain a fool. He/she will either leave the company or become wise because wise men will not allow fools to continue with them unmolested of their fool status. I had a co-worker who took me out to lunch around the UC campus, and he was speaking quite loudly on matters that were of no substance. As he spoke, I walked faster; then he walked fast, but kept talking his inner city wisdom. Finally, I turn asked if he could lower the volume and when I was given a snide answer, I told him that I did not want anyone to think that the level of discourse coming from him (street wisdom) was the level that also came from me. We were two men who could not walk together because his aura was one that did not comport with who I am and anyone may have mistaken me with what he projected. [Amos 3:3] And being a child of God I had to be careful for my good report/good name both inside and outside the church. [1Tim. 3:7] This is God's good judgment being exercised by me, but all wise men with or without God are concerned that they not be misrepresented or defamed by another man's negative reputation or behavior. If we are children of God, then the word has come to us and we have accepted it and are doing it. Such behavior, Jesus said, makes us gods, being the children of God, our father. [Psa. 82:1-6; John 10:34; Rom 8:17] The children of God as gods and they behave as the godly people they are. During the Old Testament/covenant, we see that God's people were always the wisest ones, those with great skills and great ability to understand dark sayings and great mysteries. If one were any less wise they would say that he has a dumb spirit or heart--Job, Daniel, David, Solomon, etc., were wise men of God. God's people were always commanded to be wise, and they measured up, until today; they are still commanded to be wise, but that is one of those commands Christians have ignored. We are producing blind guides that are taking many of God's people into the ditch. We have let down the standard of God; today we are concerned with this world's goods, not being like our father. So God is allowing us to destroy ourselves with foolishness, and He is killing our blinded children with death/carnality, thinking it is light when in fact it is great darkness. [Isa. 5:13-20; Mat. 6:23] The light in them is sleight of hand deceitfulness, and that is great darkness indeed. In Isaiah and Jeremiah especially, God is saying that his people have gone into captivity because of their ignorance/absence of knowledge, and no one seems to care about the culture of ignorance that has gripped the church and is strangling it to death; wicked ministers are begetting other wicked and weak ministers like unto themselves, and they are rejoicing in iniquity and enjoying their moment is the sun. [Isa. 5:13; 9:16; Mat. 15:14] Prophet Jeremiah said that there is a horrible thing that is happening in the land: "The prophets prophesy falsely, the priests rule by their means, and my people love it so. And what will ye do in the end of it all?" [Jer. 5:31] The people are rejoicing as hell is enlarging itself for them. But were they to buy of God's wisdom they could see this important aspect of faith and many more, but learning pains the flesh, and they want only to pleasure the flesh because they are carnally minded. Let me explain. First, without faith it is impossible to please God. [Heb. 11:6] So we see from scripture a connection between faith and knowledge that God says in Hosea 4:6, we are destroyed since we reject it. What is that connection? Examine with me Romans 1:20 as a way of answering that question: "The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made..." Notice that Paul gives us what is called an oxymoron, that is, an internal contradiction that can be understood if handled with great care and thought. To understand what Paul is saying, you have to see that a word is implied in Paul's statement. I have included it in the brackets: "...Being understood by the things that are made [visible]." All things were made by God; some things are visible and some are invisible. Air is invisible, but a tree that requires air is visible. Note what John said, God's invisible word was made visible when it was made flesh in Mary and lived among us. There are many invisible and visible things. Hence, what Paul is saying here is that the invisible things of God can be understood by understanding the visible things of God. God has made them using a parallel pattern. The natural body was first, the spiritual body was second. [Rom. 15:45-46] There is an order that God has made things in and that order, I repeat, is parallel to the natural and the spiritual; notice God told Moses to make sure that all things were done according to the pattern that was shown him in the mount. [Heb. 8:5] God is particular about patterns He has given because in those patterns shown us, if we know where and how to look, we can unravel the hidden things of God; by understanding those visible things we can understand spiritual and invisible things. Is that not what Paul is saying? I will show you that it is. God made the natural man Adam of the earth and he was a natural, visible man having the power of God on the earth; the second man is Jesus and he became a life-giving spirit on the same order as Adam--with the authority of God over all that God had made on the earth. [That is why when God cursed man, He, of necessity, cursed all those things that were placed under him so much so that the foundations of the earth are off course. [Gen. 3; Psa. 82:5]] The second Adam was spiritual, the invisible word of the invisible God, the Lord from Glory; he had all the power of God given unto him. [Mat. 28:18] The pattern is the same, whether visible or invisible. That is why Moses was told to follow the pattern that he had been shown. To understand what God is doing, what his patterns are, and to understand what he has done is to actually build our faith; faith, you will remember, comes by hearing of the word of God. [Rom. 10:17] Assumptive in hearing the word is to understand what one hears and do what God says. Now couple that concept with the fact that Jesus taught in parables. A parable is a physical, visible, and recognizable event or story that has a greater significance than itself. It is much like an analogy, an event or situation that one uses to highlight some other parallel truth or point being made. Jesus taught in parables for a number of reasons: to use a parable is to use what the people know. And in using parables God was showing us that he has unveiled his invisible truth to us if we know where to look and how to grasp what we see as having its parallel in the invisible and spiritual realm of God.* The unveiling of the invisible things of God are all around us in natural things. God has made all that we see and all that we don't see. We know that just because we cannot see everything or many things, that inability does not attest to their nonexistence. Such is the idea of fools--because one cannot see God, he says, there is no God! David has said, such is a fool. But we, not being fools, know that through things we can see and perceive, we can understand the things that we cannot see. Hence, we speak those things that appear not as though they were. Now if you are confused about what I have just said, allow me to come back to basics found in the Bible to further my point that by the natural and visible things we see, there is a spiritual parallel that we don't see but can be understood by looking at what God has made; second, that is why Jesus taught in parables--it was God's way of saying to those whom He has called, "I have revealed and unveiled the spiritual things to you; can you see them and prosper?" How do you think a Centurion soldier who was not Jewish and had no taught knowledge of spiritual things was able to astound Jesus with his faith? Remember, "Faith comes by hearing." How was the Samaritan Woman able to get Jesus to say that her faith was great? They understood visible things and surmised, reckoned, inferred that those visible things had a spiritual parallel. In Matthew 8, we see a Centurion soldier say to Jesus that his servant is at home sick. Jesus responded that he would go to the man's house and heal him, but the soldier refused, saying that he was unworthy of Jesus coming to his house. He asked Jesus to only speak the word and his servant would be healed. Then he explained his reasoning in asking Jesus to merely speak his word. Notice what he said: I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this man go and he goes and to another come and he comes. And to my servant do this and he does it. Sounding reasoning of the scriptures tells us that this man knew that this order of things natural and universal to him had to come from somewhere, and if he had servants and soldiers under him and needed only to give a command and it would be done without question, that Jesus too being a spiritual man of great authority must have with him spiritual and invisible forces at his command. Therefore, all he needed to do was dispatch them. He was right, and we can readily and correctly surmise that this soldier reasoned that Jesus' forces were similarly situated. The centurion looked at and understood the visible things made by God and as Paul said, clearly saw the invisible things of God. He was a student of natural things and therefore became an apt pupil of spiritual things. Jesus marveled at his faith! Now let us look at the understanding of life as a parable and taking that parable and turning it into faith. In the case of the Syrophenician Woman, she comes to Jesus requesting that her daughter be heal and Jesus says to her "No, unless you can understand what I am saying." And in what he was saying by way of a parable, there was a clause for an exception to his no. He said that it would not be right to give the children's bread (the children were the Jews; she was not a Jew; the thing she was asking for was depicted as bread) to dogs (since she was not a Jew, she is depicted here as a dog). Her respond to that parable was this: that is true of this parable, but this parable has a version that she has seen where the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. She understood that Jesus was teaching by parable and the particular parable he used, she saw that it had wiggle-room for her. So she used that parable as an act of faith. And, of course, Jesus answered and said, great is thy faith! She understood that God has given us earthly patterns that we can see in natural things that are made like unto the spiritual things; and to understand natural things that God has made is to understand spiritual things as well. She understood Jesus' parable and what it said to her spiritual request. Ignorance, so promoted in many churches, is terrible and crippling! Knowledge, so discouraged and put down in many churches, is life-affirming, salvation to the flesh and the spirit. And it is so faith building! All around us are natural things that we can see and understand. These things reflect a parallel universe of spiritual realities and the more we know of them the more we know of God. That is why Hosea said that God's people are destroyed because of their ignorance. God's people should be hungry for knowledge, hungry for truth. But instead, truth has fallen into the street, and we have rejected and despised knowledge and those who have it. Let me close by giving you an example that is not in the Bible, but it is indeed a pattern of how God has revealed his method all around us, if we can see it. When my oldest son was about two years old, his mother was walking with him, but he wanted her to pick him up. She wouldn't, so he cried continually and she persisted in NOT picking him up. That son up the ante, as it were, intensifying his demand that she pick him up: when crossing a street, he stopped and sat down in the street. That ended their debate--she picked him up. This is a family situation common to us all, and it speaks clearly to a spiritual reality, the reality of laboring in prayer and intensifying it. God shows us that we cannot keep praying and intensifying that prayer and God not answer us. I learned that many years ago. I could give many more natural examples to show you that God has given spiritual realities in natural things, but enough. We should not frustrate the grace of God by our ignorance to his word and to the things, visible and invisible, that God has made. Such frustration is to our own harm. God wants to bless us, but we must be blessed God's way, and God should not want it more than we, the recipients, do![4,500 words] ______ |
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P.O. Box 6573
Oakland, CA 94603