Embracing God's Agenda Under Pressure

One of the fascinating realities about human nature – including yours and mine! – is that the actual reality of our heart’s condition is made plain under the increasing pressures of times like these. The apostle Paul wrote about this dynamic to the Corinthian believers in his second letter in this way:

 

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;  persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed—always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you.” – 2 Corinthians 4:7-12 

 

Under the extreme pressures of physical persecution, Paul was able to say that when his body, his “earthen vessel” was hard-pressed, persecuted, or even struck down, what was actually exhibited was the character of Jesus shining through! How was it possible for him to have that view of things when everything around him seemed not just difficult, but life-threatening?

 

There’s really only one way to take that posture. It is to realize, as Paul did, that when Jesus suffered He was actually being exhibited by the Father as the perfectly submissive, obedient, faithful and ultimately victorious Son who would by His obedience redeem you and me and everyone else who calls on His Name. Then, having realized this, Paul takes his own experience of suffering and counts it as a partnership in the sufferings of Jesus, laboring together with Him to defeat the strategies of Satan by simple, faithful and loving obedience.

 

You see, Satan’s goal is to use the pressure to expose us as frauds, as those who really only believe when everything is going well. God the Father, however, has His own agenda. He uses these same pressures to exhibit us as victorious children in the image of Jesus, as overcomers who win our personal battles just as Jesus overcame and won His ultimate battle. This is the conquering Bride who in the Day of the Lord be the suitable counterpart to the Bridegroom Son of the Father.

 

The Church of Jesus Christ is going to be exhibited as glorious in these troublesome times, not merely because we have the ability to use the Name of Jesus to rebuke all the trouble, but because we are found faithful to stand with Him in the midst of the trouble, no matter what effect it has on our personal comfort zones. 

 

May God’s Presence hold you near to His heart, that having done everything else, you may be able to simply stand and wait for Him.

 

Gary Wiens

The Urgent Need For Repentance And Faith

Loyal Rue, in an address to the American Academy of Sciences, gave a remarkable address where he explains how nihilism and relativism is the overwhelming lesson of the past two centuries. But then he says, How are we to react to this? 

He said there's either the madhouse option or the totalitarian option. The madhouse option is everybody just creates his own values and meaning which results in social chaos and incoherence. The totalitarian option is for the state to impose social coherence by power and by fiat which robs people of their own personal integrity and autonomy. 

And Rue says if we're to avoid these two extremes (the madhouse option, the totalitarian option) he says we have no choice but to adopt some Noble Lie that will trick us into believing that life really does have meaning, value, and purpose even though it does not, and so we must live in self-deception on this atheistic view. And Rue says without these sorts of lies we cannot live. 

Fortunately, we as Believers in God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, have another option. Our option is the Joel 2 response to the crises of our day - focused repentance with fasting and prayer, turning our hearts away from political "solutions" that will not provide the results we desire, and turning toward the only hope we have - the Kingdom of God established through the reign and rule of Jesus Christ. 

The result of a focused turning toward God and the longing for the Desire of All Nations to reveal Himself will be the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the cultural chaos inspired by the spirit of the Antichrist. 

The dark night of Isaiah 60 is upon us, and there is only one hope - the Light of Jesus Christ shining brightly upon and among and through His people. Let us turn our hearts to Him alone, and let the knowledge of His glory fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. 

Gary Wiens

The Divine Chimney Sweep At Work

This past Sunday, during our worship service at SOZO Church, there was a strong yet gentle sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit moving on me and many others as we ministered to the Lord. The theme for us in this season is “Preparing For Glory,” with an emphasis on the importance of prayer in the secret place. We’re engaging in a seven-day fast for the purpose of sensitizing our hearts to His presence, anticipating a powerful move of the Spirit to be released in our midst, even as He has been speaking to many around the Body of Christ.

As I was experiencing His sweet touch on my own heart, I suddenly had a rather clear image in my mind of a chimney sweep quietly doing his work, hidden behind the scenes. I had the sense that this was an interesting picture of the Holy Spirit preparing us for holy fire to be released in this house, among this people. 

A chimney sweep is important because his job is to clear out things that would be damaging to the house if the fire was lit and the chimney had not been swept. The picture was of the Holy Spirit’s invitation to allow Him to find the soot and grime in our hearts, and to embrace the spirit of repentance and turning that would make us ready for the ignition of the flame.

The Old Testament prophet Malachi wrote of this same idea in chapter 3 of his prophetic book, where he speaks of the messenger of the covenant that is coming to the Temple. As we read that text, we get the sense that there are actually two messengers, one who comes to prepare the way, and the second One who comes as the burning fire to ignite the flame, to purify the priestly sons and daughters, so that the offerings brought to the Lord will be righteous, fully acceptable and perfect.

It’s that reality that I believe the Holy Spirit is communicating: He’s coming gently but insistently, helping us get ready through confession of sin, embracing a heart of repentance, and turning away from anything that would hinder or limit the presence of Jesus in our midst. It’s a quiet invitation, but an important one, similar to Jesus knocking on the door of the church in Revelation 3:20, where He is inviting the lukewarm church to open their doors and allow Him to enter. The surprise is that the Jesus that enters is the consuming fire of Malachi 3, and having been invited in, He will consume us, He will have His way.

The bottom line? Welcome the “chimney sweep.” Invite Him in to do His work in preparation for the ignition that is coming. Prepare your hearts for the Living Flame of Love to enter and have His way. He is coming, and our hearts will be satisfied.

Thankfulness Under Pressure

I was asked to share some thoughts on “Thankfulness” for our church Facebook page (www.facebook.com/sozochurchbelfair), so I thought I’d pass them along to all of you. I hope and pray that you’ll be encouraged through this.

Thankfulness is a big deal to God, because being thankful requires that we become aware of the Father’s attentiveness and activity, not only in our lives but in all things that transpire in every situation. Consider this passage in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 – 

Rejoice always! Pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Take note of these three things that the writer infers:

1.     choose joy in every situation, 

2.     choose intimate communion with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through prayer, and 

3.     choose a thankful heart even in the midst of difficulty

In order to make these choices while maintaining integrity with my own soul’s realities, I must be aware of several things that are true and unshakeable, and it’s these things that I’m thankful for:

-       There is a God in heaven who sees everything, knows everything, and according to Psalm 62:11-12 is strong and also loving. This means that God has the power and the desire to do what is best in every situation. 

-       That this God is our Father who according to Rom 8:28 works everything out for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. Imagine the 1000-dimensional chess game that God has to manage in order to make all things work together for the good of His chosen and beloved ones! Amazing!

-       For the Holy Spirit who helps us understand the Word of God concerning the times we’re living in, SO THAT we will be bold in love and not be overcome by fear or compromise. The Scriptures make clear that as the return of Jesus to the earth draws nearer, there will be increased pressures in society as well as increased anointing, power, and Christ-likeness in the Body of Christ. I am thankful that God knows what is happening, and what will happen, and is in complete control of the whole process!

-       For a community of believers like SOZO Church that worships Jesus, prays for Heaven to come to earth in our lives today, and serves one another with humility and grace. My prayer for all of you is that you are connected with a local family of believers that will help you connect more meaningfully with our Father God, and will stand with you during these pressurized times.

I want to encourage you: take time today to give thanks to God in faith that He is strong and loving, that according to Hebrews 11:6 He is who He says He is, and He will do what He says He will do. May your day be blessed as you walk in the light and favor of Jesus!

Gary Wiens

The Warring Bride, Not The Desperate Widow

In this unprecedented season of stress and pressure, when it seems as though the whole world has come to a standstill because of the enemy’s work, it is important that we as believers know our place as intercessors for such a time as this, and actually take that place to wage war.

Having said that, HOW we wage war is an essential issue. The tendency, when pressure rises, is to revert back to old patterns of prayer that are rooted in a wrong perception of who God is, and who we are as intercessors. We often fall back on strategies of prayer and warfare that are more like the prophets of Ba’al in 1 Kings 18, crying and begging for our God to do something, thinking that our volume and sense of desperation will get the job done. Like the widow of Luke 18, we are focused on issues, desperate for justice and restoration, but secretly convinced that God doesn’t really care, and that the only hope we have is that He relents under the pressure of our persistence.

It is in this time that the Holy Spirit is calling us higher, to stand in our true identity as the Bride of Christ, loving and worshipping Him, hearing His voice and agreeing with His declarations concerning our situations. Because of what Jesus did on the cross, because of the power of His blood, we have been brought into the presence of the Father, not like servants or petitioners, but as sons and daughters of the Father, and even more powerfully, as the glorious Bride of the conquering Lamb.

Our battle strategy is first of all to be worship – ascending to the presence of the Father and focusing on His power, His love, and His provision of everything we need through the blood of His Son. We minister to the King, even as Esther did in the banquet of wine, taking the cup of betrothal – we call it communion – and reminding ourselves that Jesus established a New Covenant of love with us by the shedding of His own blood. 

As we worship, we also listen. What is the Spirit of God saying about the pressures of this time? What is the reality of Heaven when it comes to Covid-19 and its effects on the nations? What is the intercession of Jesus that is ever before the Father, and how do we agree with His prayers?

As we hear, then we declare back to the Father what He is saying, setting our hearts in agreement with the agenda of Heaven. We wage war, not from desperation, but from rest and peace. We speak to the King about the enemy’s plan, and trust that the King’s love for us will move Him to deal with the issues that impact us and our world. This prayer of agreement, the prayer of faith, accomplishes everything.

Let us no longer pray as though we are strangers, foreign to the Father’s presence. Rather, let us speak to the Rock and let the Living Water flow over us again and again, until the will of God is fully accomplished in us and through us.

Gary Wiens

The Blood of Jesus: God's Ultimate Bail-Out Package

I'm meditating during this season on the power of the blood of Jesus, which is the ultimate "bail-out package" of all time. Every one of us was overwhelmed by the worst virus of all - sin. We were lost, sick, disqualified, banned from the life of God by our own choices, needing much more than any $2 trillion aid legislation could purchase - BUT GOD did it for us! 

Even as the blood of Abel cried out from the ground, and even as the blood of the innocents screams out for justice in our day, the blood of Jesus has a better word - justice has been served, mercy has been released, the door to the Father's Presence has been opened, and we are welcomed in! 

All that is necessary is that we agree with Him that we need what He has provided. The power of Jesus' blood covers it all - our rebellion and sin, our sickness, our loss of identity and destiny - all is restored by the power of Jesus' blood!

Drink deeply of this everlasting fountain today. As you wait for His intervention in this temporary circumstance, celebrate the sacrament of communion and appropriate the power of Jesus' body broken for you, and of His blood shed for you, and give thanks. Let your mind be renewed, your soul restored, and your body healed by the power of His blood. It is enough.

Finding Our Glory in the Knowledge of God

It's good to keep in mind the sovereign goodness of God, and that He is in charge of all the realities that confront us, even in times like these.

Marie was spending time in prayer last night, and was led to these statements from Jeremiah 9:23-24 -

Thus says the LORD:

“Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the mighty man glory in his might,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
24 But let him who glories glory in this,
That he understands and knows Me,
That I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
For in these I delight,” says the LORD.

Lovingkindness - God's covenant of love to act according to His own nature in relation to every person and situation.

Judgment - God's commitment to remove everything from our lives that hinders love.

Righteousness - God's perfect design that results in perfect satisfaction and fulfillment for all who submit to His will and His ways.

These Kingdom realities are the priorities of our God, as we become still before Him, submitting to His ways, we will come to peace and rest as He works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called to His purposes.

Blessings on you all - Gary Wiens

Blessings on You and an Invitation for You

Good Morning, Friends! 

What a weird and fascinating time we find ourselves in right now! My prayer for us all is that we will seize this moment as an invitation to go deeper into the Presence of Jesus, to not just learn about Him, but to actually learn FROM Him.

This kind of forced Sabbath is certainly unusual for us all, but our choice is clear - we can press into our Savior's agenda, or we can self-medicate and miss a wonderful opportunity to align ourselves with the heart of our Father.

I'm sharing a link with you to a YouTube message by Mike Bickle, a good and trusted leader in the Body of Christ, and the Director of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. He has a valuable perspective on the current situation, and I urge you to watch and consider. Here's the link:

https://youtu.be/KAaQGQOS6Ww

Blessings on you all, and may this day be blessed as you immerse yourselves in His Presence!

Gary

Seven Hands and the Seven Spirits of God

A couple of years ago, my wife Marie was getting ready for bed, and she sensed the Lord speaking to her, telling her to prepare a notepad and a pen because He was going to speak to her during the night. She was intrigued by this and followed the instructions. At about 2 AM that night she was awakened by the voice of the Lord speaking just two words: “Seven hands.” In the dark of the night Marie found her pad and pen, and wrote those words down. The next morning we began the process of trying to discern what that cryptic message could mean.

Understanding has come slowly. Although we knew that “Seven” is the number of perfection and completion, and that “hands” could refer to the working power of God through His people, Marie couldn’t get settled that we had the full interpretation. Then recently, she felt led to share this encounter with a friend of ours, Shoshana Rose Deweber, who is a leader in the prayer movement in Israel. 

Rose responded immediately with the sense that the “Seven hands” word was speaking of the ministry of the seven-fold Spirit of God that is referenced in Isaiah 11 as resting upon the Branch, the Messiah who would arise out of the stem of Jesse – namely, Jesus. This seven-fold Spirit is also spoken of in Revelation 4, pictured there as the seven lamps of fire burning before the throne of God. 

Here is that passage from the first two verses of Isaiah 11:

Isaiah 11:1–2 There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.

It is my understanding that this number “seven” refers to the full and complete activity of the Holy Spirit, initially resting upon and empowering the ministry of Jesus, and now fully available to us as the Body of Christ. 

Over the next several weeks, I will be examining the Scriptures concerning each one of these manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and giving some practical ways that we as Body of Christ can access the powerful resource of the Spirit’s presence that is available to us. 

Stay tuned!

Gary Wiens

The Seven-Fold Spirit of God: The Spirit of Yehovah

In this series of articles, I’m looking at Isaiah 11:2, where the prophet articulates the seven-fold anointing of the Holy Spirit that will be upon the Branch of Jesse, who is Jesus, the Servant-Messiah. This post will focus on the first of these anointings, the Spirit of the LORD. Notice that in most versions of the Scripture, the capitalized “LORD” is replacing the personal name of God, which is Yehovah, or Yahweh.

At first glance, it might seem that this designation would not be separate from the other six, but would rather serve as a general heading for all the other dimensions of the Holy Spirit. However, when we look at the passages where the phrase “the Spirit of the LORD” is used, there are specific and powerful implications for us as the people of God. Please consider these thoughts:

There are a number of situations where the Spirit of Yehovah “came upon” an individual for a specific work of power in leadership and warfare. The Hebrew language that we have translated “came upon” literally means “to rush upon with great force.” Consider these examples:

In Judges 3:10, we see how the Spirit of Yehovah “came upon” Othniel, who was the younger brother of Caleb. The purpose of this anointing was that he might judge Israel (that is, rule the nation by the power of God’s anointing), and lead the armies into battle for the establishment of the nation in its God-given territories.

Then in Judges 6, we have the story of Gideon, how the Spirit of Yehovah “came upon” him in a powerful way for courage, for authority in leadership, and in miraculous power to deliver Israel once again from the ravages of the enemy. The idea in that story is that the Spirit of Yehovah “clothed Gideon like a glove,” and Gideon in effect became the hand of Yehovah to deal with the issues confronting the nation.

What about for us today? In the face of the coronavirus crisis with all of its implications across the spectrum of nations and cultures, we need the Spirit of Yehovah to rush upon us! I believe that these stories should give us courage to 1) pray for our leaders at every level of society to be clothed with the wisdom, power, and authority of God to lead our nation, our businesses, our schools, our churches, and our personal spheres of influence in the ways and character of God. 

Since the Holy Spirit was made available under the Old Covenant for such matters, and since we are the recipients of a New Covenant, and since we have been given THIS SAME Holy Spirit, it’s important – even essential – that we learn how to appropriate the power and authority of the Spirit of Yehovah to accomplish His purposes in our time.

So, the question for us is: where is the enemy at work, where is he trying to make inroads in your life, and in the situations that you care about? Certainly with the current medical crisis hitting the nations of the earth, there is a need for the power and authority of Yehovah to come upon our leaders at every level, and upon us as we stand to face the enemy. Come, Spirit of Yehovah! Rest on us your people, and give us victory even as you did in days past. You are the same, yesterday, today, and forever, so stretch out Your hand upon us, and give us your strength.

Through the might Name of Jesus, Amen.

Contending for the Presence of God

The Holy Spirit is speaking loudly and clearly these days through many voices from many different directions, summoning God’s people to pay attention to His agenda at this time in history. We have heard His voice clearly in our own personal times in prayer as well as through the urgings of prophetic declarations from many sources, literally around the world. 

His agenda? He desires to be present among His people in manifest power and authority, beyond what we’ve seen or heard about. There is a yearning in the heart of God to fully be Who He is among His people, fully released to bring His own kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy through the Holy Spirit.

One of the main ways He is capturing – even forcing our attention is by the presence among us of people who desperately need an encounter of the healing and restoring power of God. Because we have seen His hand at work in other times and in other places, we can no longer look past those in our own midst who, without an intervention of God’s healing and delivering power, face a future filled with pain, sorrow, and even death.

In those situations we are forced to admit that our current experience of God’s presence is lacking something. We need and want more, and so we make up our minds to sing a little louder, pray with more intensity, and contend with more seriousness for His manifest presence to come. It’s not sufficient to merely know the lyrics of a song like “When You Walk Into The Room, Everything Changes”. We need the lyrics of that song to become our norm, the reality of God’s Kingdom being manifest on earth as it is in Heaven.

Recently, in an early morning prayer meeting at SOZO Church in Belfair, Washington, I sensed the Holy Spirit say something to me that shifted my perspective on the matter of contending with God for His move among us. I sensed Him say that my emphasis had been on “CONTENDING with God”, as though He is an adversary that needs to be won over, and that I needed to shift that to “contending WITH God” as my Father and friend, partnering with Him in His desire. I sensed Him say to me that there were some realities He needed from me in order for Him to be present like He desires to be present, and I felt the weight of Heaven pressing down to earth, God’s yearning to be with His people in an unhindered way.

Isaiah 66:1 quotes the LORD saying, “Heaven is My throne, and earth is my footstool. What is the house that you will build for Me, and what is the place of My rest?” I believe that what is meant there is God asking, “Where is the place where My will can be carried out without resistance?” The reality He needs from me is to be in full agreement with HIS desire to come in power, with nothing in me that would stand in His way or resist the movements of His Spirit.

How about where you are? Is God contending with you so that you will contend WITH Him, that His will might be fully accomplished where you are? May it be so! Amen.

The Motivation of Seeking Righteousness

Why is this pursuit of righteousness so important in our lives? Because it simply means that we can become everything God intended us to be. I appreciate the Armed Forces of the United States, and it is with due respect that I say they cannot fulfill their promise to their recruits to “Become all that you can be.” The power to make us all that we can be rests with God alone, and is released only to those who find their craving for righteousness satisfied in God.

It really goes back to this most basic thing. God has a design for each of us that is perfect, and that will fit in perfect harmony with His design for the rest of His creation. Our happiness, the full realization of God’s blessing in our lives, is dependent upon that craving being satisfied. The release of power to bring healing, deliverance, and salvation to the people we love and to the nations of the earth depends upon His righteousness being formed in us. To try to find our fulfillment apart from that design is to live frustrated, empty, and unfulfilled.

There is a fascinating passage of Scripture recorded in Psalm 112 that speaks to the quality of life reserved for those who are found to be righteous. Consider these things that God says concerning this group of people (Psalm 112:6-12, taken from the New Living Translation):

·       Those who are righteous will be long remembered.

·       They do not fear bad news.

·       They confidently trust the Lord to take care of them.

·       They are confident and fearless, and can face their foes triumphantly.

·       They share freely and give generously to those in need.

·       Their good deeds will be remembered forever.

·       They will have influence and honor.

·       The wicked will see this and be infuriated. They will grind their teeth in anger; they will slink away, their hopes thwarted.

This amazing list of blessings is promised to those who hunger and thirst for all things to be conformed to reality. They will be fully satisfied, satiated with righteousness! They will see all things become as they should be, and that reality will literally last forever. We’ve decided that we want to be part of this group. Our hope is that you do as well.

Righteousness: The Source of Ultimate Gladness

Another dimension of Jesus’ commitment to righteousness is revealed in Psalm 45. The writer of this beautiful poem is singing a hymn of praise to the King, a love song that finds its ultimate fulfillment in the person of Jesus. Under the leading of the Holy Spirit, the writer makes this declaration about Jesus that points with boldness and clarity to the benefits of loving righteousness:

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever;

A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom. 

You love righteousness and hate wickedness;

Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You

With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.

(Psalm 45:6-7, NKJV)

The rulership of God through His Son Jesus is revealed here as eternal. His authority is rooted in righteousness, and every decision will be made in line with how things really are. Now here’s the wondrous point: because Jesus loves righteousness and hates wickedness, God has anointed Him with the anointing of gladness more than any other man.

Do we get this? There is a direct correlation between the passionate pursuit of righteousness and the realization of gladness in our lives! To the degree that righteousness becomes our passion, we will live in the experience of joy. Do we see that righteousness cannot mean a suffocating system of external practices that are superimposed upon an uncooperative human nature? Rather, righteousness can only mean a deep conformity to the reality of how things are in God’s heart. As we are transformed by the love of Jesus, and become like Him by the power of the Holy Spirit, loving and pursuing righteousness and hating the perversion of it, we will find ourselves being flooded with gladness “more than our companions.”

This is why Jesus says we must hunger and thirst after this condition. The pursuit of righteousness must become the fundamental passion of our lives if we truly desire to reach our power potential. In the Sermon on the Mount, just a few phrases after He has spoken the Beatitudes, Jesus uses language that speaks of the intensity of hungering and thirsting after righteousness:

If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. (Matthew 5:29-30, NKJV)

Jesus is saying here that nothing matters as much as doing what it takes to be conformed to God’s character. So what if we lose something that seems really important now? In the end, we get it all back and more! Sometimes we count the cost of obedience and feel distress over what we will miss if we really get serious about God and His Kingdom. But Jesus is inviting us to consider what we will miss if we don’t get serious about what He is saying here. God is offering us full blessing and happiness, more power and authority than we will know what to do with, and we’re worried that we might miss out on some silly temporal pleasure. We forfeit an unimaginable and eternal inheritance of power and authority for the sake of something that is ultimately worthless! Oh, Beloved, we must get hold of this truth deep in our hearts!

Hunger and Thirst in the Life of Jesus

If we are to come into our full inheritance of authority on earth as it is in heaven, it is also essential that we perceive that Jesus is the model of each of these character traits. It is Jesus to whom we are joined in the true marriage covenant, and it is He who gives full expression to each of the Beatitudes. Therefore, to embrace the Beatitudes as our lifestyle is to cooperate with the process of conformity to His image, which is our destiny.

It is a compelling thing to consider that in the person of Jesus, God gave full expression of His desires for mankind through this one true Man. As a man full of the Holy Spirit, Jesus knew the heart of His Father, and lived His life in complete agreement with His Father’s will. This truth helps us to comprehend one of the more startling events in Jesus’ life, recorded for us in the Gospel of John:

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” Then His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up.” (John 2:13-17, NKJV)

Jesus came into Jerusalem filled with understanding from His Father gained in the place of intimate communion and prayer. He was fully aligned with the Father’s character, and therefore saw all things from the Father’s perspective. He knew what the Father had in mind when He called the nation of Israel into existence. He knew that the true identity of this people could only be realized in conformity to the Father’s vision for them. Therefore, Jesus had chosen His disciples based on the Father’s leading, seeing in them the destiny of apostolic authority even while they were immature and carnal. Jesus understood that the Temple was intended to be a prophetic window into God’s desire to have a dwelling place with His people. It was to be a place of communion and intimacy, a place of full access to all who would come, a place of mercy and grace where people would be invited into the empowering presence of God.

The spiritual leaders of the day, however, had turned the Temple into a religious bastion, a stronghold of legalism and oppression that served more to separate the people from God than to open the way to Him. The presence of the money-changers in the courtyard revealed a pollution at the core of the system. When Jesus encountered the situation He was blasted with the discrepancy between what was in His Father’s heart and what was being expressed by those who were set in place to reveal the Father to the people. The Temple had been so overrun with empty ritual that God had long before withdrawn His presence from it.

The text in John 2 says that Jesus was consumed by zeal for His Father’s house. In other words, a deep passion burned in Jesus’ heart for God’s people to realize their destiny as kings and priests in the Kingdom of God.  He yearned to see intimacy between His Father and His people, to see the power of God released upon the nation in the way His Father had intended from the beginning. Therefore, when Jesus encountered a religious system that produced the very opposite thing, He was enraged. He experienced what can truly be called “righteous indignation,” where His anger was rooted in His passion to see everything conformed to His Father’s image.

In our day, most religious systems find themselves on the other side of the spectrum. Rather than being overly concerned with external behavior at the expense of heart reality, the religious systems of our day shy away from any call to righteousness. We prefer to speak about a sappy version of love that makes no demands, that issues no call to radical living, and leaves us in our unrighteous mess. The Christian church today is filled with all sorts of compromise, greed, broken marriages, and open resistance to the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures. For fear of scaring people away from the institution, we have dumbed down the Gospel to the point of impotence, and then we wonder why twenty-four million believers have left the institutional church to seek an encounter with God that will actually bring change to their lives.

But impotence is not only the scourge of the mainstream, seeker-oriented institution. The churches that claim the power of God are just as devoid of anything beyond bells, whistles, and the occasional testimony. Once again I want to quote Bob Sorge:

We live in an hour where there is a huge gap between the Gospel we preach and the level of our experience in the Kingdom. We preach a Gospel of power, of healing, of miracles, of signs and wonders, of the resurrection power of Jesus Christ; but what we actually experience falls woefully short of the fullness we proclaim. The demonized come to our meetings and leave with their demons; the handicapped come in their wheelchairs and leave in their wheelchairs; they come to the meeting blind and leave blind; they come deaf and leave deaf. The lack of power in the church, at least in America, has us living under a great shroud of reproach. 

This caricature of New Testament Christianity is appalling to Jesus in our day even as it was during His time on earth. He longs to come and encounter His people in power, to bring cleansing and purity, and to release the authority of His Kingdom to His people in unprecedented ways. When Jesus cleansed the Temple in the event recorded in Matthew 21, the result of the cleansing was that “the blind and the lame came to Him in the Temple, and He healed them.” Oh, how we need a breakthrough of the righteousness of Jesus in His Church today!

Gary Wiens

Confidence Before God is the Fruit of Righteousness

When righteousness is centrally established and becomes the goal and expression of our lives, there emerges a marvelous confidence that God Himself is our champion. We begin to realize that nothing can shake us from our place in His heart, and that He is the one watching over our every circumstance. King David was one who understood this principle to a wonderful degree. His writings reflect a deep confidence in the Lord his God who would protect him in the situations of life, and cause all things to be established in his favor. Meditate on this section of Psalm 7 that reveals the confidence of David’s heart before the Lord:

The LORD shall judge the peoples;

Judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness,

And according to my integrity within me. 

Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end,

But establish the just;

For the righteous God tests the hearts and minds. 

My defense is of God,

Who saves the upright in heart.

(Psalm 7:8-10, NJKV)

The confidence of David’s life was that he had made the righteousness of God the goal of his seeking. Therefore, because his life was in line with God’s righteousness, he could pray in an amazingly bold way – “Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness, according to my integrity within me!” David comes to the solid place of trust where he can depend fully upon the judgments of God, because he knows that his own heart is upright – in other words, he is as fully aligned as possible with the righteousness of God.

By contrast, there also came a time in David’s life when he acted in profound contradiction to righteousness. The story is recorded in 2 Samuel 11, and concerns the situation in which David, as the King of the nation, should have been leading his troops in the war that they were fighting. However, he remained in his palace, where one evening he went for a walk on the roof of his house. From there he observed Bathsheba, the beautiful wife of Uriah, bathing in the open air of her balcony. David lusted after this woman, sent for her, and impregnated her. In order to cover up the situation, the King sent for Uriah, who was one of his military commanders. David tried to get Uriah to sleep with his wife, but the man was too honorable to enjoy the pleasures of home while his soldiers were fighting. So, in a fit of horribly wicked behavior, David arranged to have Uriah placed in the hottest battle zone, where he was killed. David then took Bathsheba to his palace, and claimed her for his wife.

This situation was deeply displeasing to God, and brought great displeasure upon the life of David and his descendants. God sent His prophet Nathan to confront David, who responded with deep repentance, and wrote Psalm 51 as his song of confession. In that Psalm is a profound phrase that grips me each time I read it. Verse six of that Psalm declares that God “desires truth in the inward parts.” This is the formation of righteousness in the interior of our souls – to have our inward parts, our thoughts, attitudes, and secret longings conformed to the desires and ways of God. It is this alignment that God is after so that He might pour out His blessing on His people.

The Importance of Agreeing with God’s Opinion

Since these things are true, the only thing that really ought to matter to me is the discovery of what God thinks about me. Once I begin to understand His definition of reality in general, and my life in particular, then I begin to have the hope of coming to some sense of fulfillment and power. Consider the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones as he writes of the ultimate importance of God’s priorities being established in our hearts:

We are not meant to control our Christianity; our Christianity is meant to control us. I am to be dominated by the truth because I have been made a Christian by the operation of the Holy Spirit within. I quote that striking statement of the apostle Paul which surely puts it so perfectly – “I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” He is in control, not I; so that I must not think of myself as a natural man who is controlling his attitude and trying to be Christian in various ways. No; His Spirit controls me at the very center of my life, controls the very spring of my being, the source of my every activity.

You cannot read these Beatitudes without coming to that conclusion. The Christian faith is not something on the surface of a man’s life, it is not merely a kind of coating or veneer. No, it is something that has been happening in the very center of his personality. That is why the New Testament talks about rebirth and being born again, about a new creation and about receiving a new nature. It is something that happens to a man in the very center of his being; it controls all his thoughts, all his outlook, all his imagination, and, as a result, all his actions as well. All our activities, therefore, are the result of this new nature, this new disposition which we have received from God through the Holy Spirit. 

Again, Jesus’ point in Matthew 6:33 is that the pursuit of God’s rule and the conformity of all things to His character is the most important quest of the human heart. When righteousness is the goal of our seeking, then God becomes involved in a profound way to add “all these things” to our experience. The things spoken of here are the physical needs of life – food, clothing, provision – the things that fill our hearts with worry when righteousness is not the goal. But when righteousness is the goal of our seeking, and when in the power of the Holy Spirit we conform our expressions of life to that righteousness, then everything else that concerns us comes into place according to the purposes of God our Father.

Receiving the Gift of Righteousness

The biggest mistake we make is when we attempt to be righteous by our own energy and strength. Instead of focusing on falling in love with Jesus, and allowing His Spirit to transform us, we try to “behave ourselves.” We try to act like Jesus without being transformed by His power first. We want to be good enough to gain God’s approval. This will lead us to frustration with absolute certainty. The Scripture is clear that with the single exception of Jesus there is no one who is righteous, not even one person!  If that is true, then we have a huge dilemma! How can we live up to the demands of righteousness if no one can do it?

The answer the Bible gives us is that because Jesus lived as a righteous man, we too can anticipate living in His perfection as a fruit of relationship with Him. We are told in Philippians 3:9 that righteousness does not come by our own strength, but by faith in Christ as a gift from God. When we acknowledge our failure to live as humans were intended to live, and ask for His forgiveness, God’s power changes us inside. He makes righteousness available to us as a gift. We are granted a new nature, a new kind of life in which righteousness is possible. Because of His sacrifice on the cross, He can impart righteousness to us as a gift, and then give us the strength to grow up into that reality.

The Bible speaks of a reality that is called “righteousness,” and it is the truth of how things really are, rooted in the character of God who created all things. There actually is a standard, an perfect reference point from which every particular thing takes its meaning. That standard is God, whose character is made visible and accessible to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Consider this passage from the writings of Paul:

He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. (Colossians 1:15-18, NKJV)

Your life is part of the “all things” that Jesus created out of His own desire for relationship with human beings. God chose you before He created the universe,  and designed you from the very beginning to look like His Son Jesus, in whose image you were made. You were His idea! Therefore, since God thought you up, there is only one definition of your life that can possibly be right, and that is God’s idea of your life! He has a complete understanding of who you are, and Jesus is in full agreement with the Father about you! He means for you to look just like Jesus, and to the degree that you begin to look like Him in your attitudes and actions, you will begin to touch righteousness. God knows who you really are, and He is determined that you will receive everything you need to be just like He designed you!

Jesus said in Matthew 6:33 that the most important thing is to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. If we will do that, then everything else that can possibly seem important will be added to us as well. Nothing is more important that to come into alignment with how God designed us to be.

Powerful People Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

One of the things that Marie and I enjoy is looking at cars and dreaming about what it would be like to tool down the motorway in a variety of luxury SUVs or sports models. Marie is captivated by the Porsche Cayenne, and fantasizes about the thrill of driving one. I particularly like BMW’s, and am intrigued by their motto: “The relentless pursuit of perfection.” The motto points to the elusive but conceivable goal of their company – to produce cars that touch perfection. What a wonder it would be to drive the ideal road machine, the perfect car! Now if there is a reality in the realm of automobiles that can be termed “perfection,” that means there is a standard, a norm that draws our thoughts and serves as a reference point for our dreams. That standard would be the objective reality against which every car would be measured.

You see, we tend to look at life this way. There is something inherent in us that longs for perfection, and we are exhilarated when our experience touches something that approaches it. When people or situations fall short of perfection, we are invariably disappointed even though we may have a cynical response that is resigned to accepting less than the ideal. The fascinating thing is that the teachings of Jesus in the Bible encourage this pursuit of perfection. As a matter of fact, Jesus indicates very clearly that perfection is there for us who will seek after it. He calls it “righteousness.”

The difficulty that we encounter when we think of perfection is that it makes us feel like we have to live up to something that is foreign to us. We think of ourselves as fundamentally flawed, and we have no hope that we could ever live up to a standard called “righteousness.” But God created us for glory, not for frustration. The human race was broken by sin, but Jesus made the way clear for everything that was in God’s heart to be restored to us. We long for perfection because it is our birthright, to be fully realized when we see Him face to face. But this perfection is not something merely to be attempted in an external, behavioral way. Our hearts were made to be captured by the perfection of Jesus, to fall in love with Him, and to be transformed in such a way that the actions of our lives would become like Him as well.

Essentially the term “righteousness” means to live in a way that is consistent with God’s perfect pattern for your life. This perfect pattern is the man Jesus. You were created to be like Him. To be righteous is to have our inner person – our hearts, our thoughts, our attitudes – aligned with the pattern of Jesus, with His thoughts and attitudes. From that internal alignment we can begin to live externally in line with the behavior of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Righteousness means to be in perfect alignment with how God sees all things to be in the reality of His life, and He promises that those who seek after it with intensity will be fully satisfied. This line of thought may cause one to ask “How do I discover what God thinks and how He sees all things?” The answer to that question is that in a spirit of worship and prayer we begin to search the Scriptures and study the person of Jesus who perfectly reveals God’s character.

The Bible is full of thoughts and actions that are attributed to righteousness, and to the lifestyle of righteous people. Consider for example this list of character traits that are attributed to righteousness in the Book of Proverbs:

• The Outlook on Life
o They are hopeful (Proverbs 10:24)
o They are concerned about the welfare of God’s creation (Proverbs 12:10)
o They understand justice (Proverbs 28:5)
• The Response to Life
o They are covered with blessings (Proverbs 10:6)
o They give thought to their ways (Proverbs 21:29)
o They persevere against evil (Proverbs 24:15-16)
• How the Righteous are seen by Others
o They are appreciated (Proverbs 13:15)
o Their conduct is upright (Proverbs 21:8)
o They do not desire the company of godless people (Proverbs 24:1-2)
o Others are glad when they triumph (Proverbs 28:12)
o They care for the poor (Proverbs 29:7)
o They detest the dishonest (Proverbs 29:27)
• The Quality of Life
o They stand firm (Proverbs 10:25)
o They are delivered by righteousness (Proverbs 11:6)
o No real harm befalls them (Proverbs 12:21)
o Their income results in treasure (Proverbs 15:6)
o They avoid evil (Proverbs 16:17)
o They are bold as lions (Proverbs 28:1)
o They will be safe (Proverbs 28:18)
• Short-term Results of Righteousness
o They walk securely (Proverbs 10:9)
o They are rewarded with prosperity (Proverbs 13:21)
• Long-term Results of Righteousness
o God protects them (Proverbs 10:29)
o They are never uprooted (Proverbs 10:30)
• Eternal Expectations
o They will earn a sure reward (Proverbs 11:18)
o They will attain life (Proverbs 11:19)
o Their life will end only in good (Proverbs 11:23)
o They will stand firm (Proverbs 12:7)
o They will have a refuge when they die (Proverbs 14:32)
• God’s Opinion of the Righteous
o He delights in their good (Proverbs 11:20)
o He will cause evil people to bow to them (Proverbs 14:19)

This is an amazing list of character traits and promises, isn’t it? Those who pursue righteousness with all their hearts will indeed be a powerful group of people! We would encourage you to meditate on these things, asking the Holy Spirit to help you understand what it means to live in righteousness in such a way that these statements become true of your life.

Gary Wiens

How Meekness Is Formed In Us

The process of forming meekness in any of us usually involves a series of stages, with some of them almost inevitably traumatic. I have long been convinced that only God knows the true identity and destiny of any given individual. Only God (or those who speak with an understanding of His opinion) can communicate to a person with the necessary authority to establish them in settled truth concerning who they are. If it were our natural inclination to listen to Him and receive His opinions as real and true, the journey to meekness and power would be less troublesome.

However, for most of us the process of discovery is shot through with trouble. We have this inclination to try to make something of ourselves, to prove something to God and everyone else. We want to be great apart from relationship with Him, and the simple fact is that it does not work. The only way to lasting greatness is the way of Jesus, and sooner or later we must choose that way.

Someone might consider the options and decide that ruling their own life apart from God is still preferable to submitting to Him. A famous man once stated “I would rather rule in hell than serve in Heaven.” It is a stunning admission of the self-centered rebellion that characterizes the fallen human soul, but frankly that sentiment is not uncommon. The tragic deception is this: no one will be ruling in hell, not even Satan. The Biblical presentation is that hell is a lake of fire where there is nothing but eternal and excruciating torment for those who choose to go there.  Make no mistake: Satan and all those who choose his way will be in a literal place of eternal torment by their own choice. There is no life and no authority apart from God, only agony.

So, as I said, sooner or later we must choose God’s way. Most of us choose it later rather than sooner. And because God is the patient Father that He is, He allows us the choices that invariably leave Him out, at least at the beginning. So we try to become “Somebody” and often find ourselves hating what we’ve become. Or we succeed for a time, and then cannot figure out why everything crashes down around us. Or perhaps we reach the pinnacle of the mountain we were trying to climb, only to find that satisfaction has eluded us, and we are no more fulfilled than we were at the beginning of the journey.

You see, we can never genuinely serve people until we come into agreement with God’s way of doing things. We must become convinced that God will honor and reward those who are meek, who use their strength to serve and bless rather than to control. Until we believe that the meek will inherit the earth, we will either strive to gain control of our world by the exertion of our own strength, or we will give up and decide that power and authority are beyond our reach.

God’s purpose in these issues of life is that the frustration of our attempts to fulfill our goals should bring us to the place of calling out to Him for help. He knows that we can never reach our power potential without His input, because having designed us and made us, He holds the secrets of our identity and destiny. But He will never impose that knowledge on us. His desire is that we choose Him and seek for Him as a child would seek after their father, or as a lover would seek after their Beloved.

Some people, in the foolishness and stupidity of their own pride, keep banging their heads against the wall of self-discovery, thinking that they can keep doing the same old routine and maybe this time there will be a different result. It’s really insanity in action! Those folks will never know who they are, where they came from, where they’re going, and the authority that is theirs for the asking. They are stuck in their foolishness, and as long as they persist in it nothing will change. Others give up in hopelessness, tired of striving but too disappointed to trust God anymore. They roll over and die inside, convinced that God is powerless, or worse – cruel and uncaring. They say this: “He will use me, but He won’t answer my prayers.”

Still others, however, whom the Scriptures call wise, learn to call upon the Lord in their times of distress. Consider this representative list of steps that characterize those that are coming to the place of meekness:

• Having seen that apart from God they do not have what it takes to attain the greatness for which they were made, they begin to acknowledge their poverty.
• Having faced the rebellion in their own hearts toward God and His Son Jesus, they begin to grieve and mourn over their own sin and the pain it has caused Him.
• They begin to pray, to ask God’s forgiveness for their self-centered rebellion.
• They begin to search the Bible for clues about their existence.
• They begin to hang out with people who are discovering that identity and destiny are rooted in what God says about you, and that apart from that reality there can be no fulfillment in life.
• They begin to spend large amounts of time just thinking about the person of Jesus, reading about His life in the Bible, and asking the Holy Spirit to help them become like Him.
• They learn to worship God and thank Him for the way He has led them to Himself, and for the blessings that He has in store for them as they follow His ways.
• They begin to serve one another as Jesus served the people around Him.

The wondrous thing is that as we give ourselves to activities like these, God begins to reveal the truth concerning who we are and what we are about. Our sense of destiny begins to emerge, along with the authority we need to come into our full inheritance of power, both here and in the coming age. This change happens super-naturally from God.  Little by little, from one level of glory to the next, we begin to look and sound and act like Jesus. The more we become like Him – treating people like He did, serving instead of demanding to be served – the more we step into our own place of authority. The more we taste of this life, the more we hunger and thirst after it. Having become meek, we begin to inherit the earth.