…I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked… and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God… from the midst of the stones of fire.(Ezekiel 28:14, 16)
Burning hot encounters with majestic splendor do not guarantee a continued walk on holy ground with God. Satan walked among the stones of fire but he burned with his own passions. Do we do that with the things of God? We encounter Him but all it does is to stir our pride and enflame our passion for our own agenda. There is a way to corrupt your own wisdom, to warp your spiritual perspective and it begins by becoming convinced that you are more than you really are, or by wanting to be something you are not called to be.
You don’t need a burning bush encounter in order to obey what you know His Word already tells you to do. To treat everything else that isn’t some radical experience as common is to treat everyday life with Jesus as common. Just because you have had some experience doesn’t necessarily make you special. It might make you responsible to use that gift, but all the children of God are loved equally. This doesn’t mean we don’t have particular roles to play, it means we need to be careful lest our gifts spoil us, and be careful of looking at experiences or gifts that make us bitter toward God and jealous of other people. We should be careful of being bedazzled because we may end up bedeviled.
4 comments:
The post from yesterday, "An Uncommon Honor" was missing a paragraph, not sure how that happened, but now that all four are included perhaps it will be more edifying to you..God bless...
No matter how well we are doing, when we start to look at ourselves we start to look like the devil...
We encounter Him but all it does is to stir our pride and enflame our passion for our own agenda.
We should be careful of being bedazzled because we may end up bedeviled.
We are such vain creatures to think that we are important enough or strong enough that these things won't grab ahold of us. And when we think this way, they already have a stronghold.
Heb 12:1-6
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
“For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”
Praise ye the Lord!
Our agenda should be the Gospel. If you have a church where all the members have the Gospel as their agenda, (and that means a Christ-focused Gospel, not people-focused), then the spiritual battle will rage fierce no doubt, and there shall be casualties, but the Lord works His greatest victories when Satan fights his hardest.
We will we evey battle, and then the war, if we humbly stay Gospel focused, with our heart's greatest longing to honor our Lord Jesus Christ, and His Cross.
Post a Comment