END OF THE YEAR HEART SEARCH (PART 3)
These end of the year nuggets are filled with deep spiritual truths, and it takes a spiritual person to understand them. These nuggets of wisdom from the book, The Final Quest, do so much for my heart. I can’t tell you how much I sense God’s grace and peace when I meditate on them and let them do a work in me. Here’s the big revelation I take away from many of these: most of the decisions I often make are mostly based on what will benefit me and take me further in life and ministry without the consideration for the perfect will of God and His heart in the matter. Oh, how deceptive the heart can be!
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” (Jer. 17:9-10)!
How I can obtain victory without suffering? How much of what I still do promotes myself instead of Christ?
These questions often reveal to me that I am still operating in far more self-centeredness than Christ-centeredness. This weighs heavily on my heart because I am a minister, and to whom much is given much is required.
When the apostle Paul saw the light on the road to Damascus he began to understand that his own reasoning had led him into direct conflict with the very truth he claimed to be serving. Our reasoning will always do that, too. It will lead you to do that which is contrary to God’s will. Because I’m a minister, greater anointing brings greater danger of this happening to me, if I do not learn what Paul learned. If I do not stay in a place of humility and take up my cross every day and do all things for the sake of the gospel, the more influence I have the greater danger I will be in. That is a very sobering reality that all ministers and saints need to realize. This is the reason why a mature man will not reach for anointing and authority because he realizes that the stumbling blocks increase with such.
One of the greatest deceptions and stumbling blocks that comes upon God’s anointed ones is that they begin to think that just because God gives them a little supernatural revelation and power, that their ways must be God’s ways and what they think must be what God thinks. But we can only think like God when we are in perfect union with Him, and even with the most wise and anointed men, this only happens part of the time. Everyone falls short. Even the apostle Paul did. Our quest must be in that we are maturing and getting closer to the heart of God and not further away into greater darkness of thought and destructive reasonings.
Paul’s great wisdom was to embrace his weaknesses. He understood that if God delivered him from them He would not have been able to trust him with the level of revelation and power he walked in. Paul learned to distinguish between his own weaknesses and the revelation of the Spirit. He knew that when he was beset with weaknesses and fears that he was not seeing from God’s perspective, but from his own. This caused Paul to seek the Lord and depend on the Lord even more. This was his great wisdom, and it is the reason he boasted in his infirmities or weaknesses (2 Cor. 12:5). This level of spiritual depth and understanding is clearly lacking in Christianity today. We confuse what comes from our own hearts and minds with what comes from God’s heart and mind. Paul had learned to decipher between the two because of his sufferings.
It is easy to see light in God’s light (Ps. 36:9), but our perspective begins to change when we are in the battle or some kind of trial. When we don’t abide in the Lord, fears, impatience, frustration and even anger besets us. We don’t see clearly. We don’t judge righteously. We don’t see the Lord.
One of the greatest attributes any Christian can cultivate is to see the Lord in every situation and circumstance. In order to do this we must look with the eyes of our hearts. We can be just as close to the Lord here on the earth as anyone else has ever been, even Paul, if we will lay aside everything that hinders intimacy with Him and give ourselves fully to seek Him and to know Him. We are the ones who determine how close we will be to the Lord and not Him. If we will humble ourselves He will give grace.
Let us pray for one another that the veils that cloud our thoughts and judgements may be removed as we continually turn to the Lord.
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