THIRD HEAVEN RANCH

Yesterday I was able to attend a former church (www.crossgates.org) in Mississippi while I was there for a wedding.  I love this church and, as always, received a blessing from being there.   The pastor spoke on Exodus 15:22-26 and had a lot to say about the piece of wood (also translated log, tree, etc.) that was thrown into the water at Marah.

As is often the case, I’m listening to the sermon, but I have another ‘sermon’ running parallel in my head as I’m taking all I’ve read and studied through the week and making connections and comparisons.

Then last night I was catching up on some of my email devotions after being gone for the weekend and I came to one by Mark Batterson (www.markbatterson.com), a pastor in Washington, DC.  He too spoke of trees!

When the Lord brings to my attention repetitive words or thoughts, I always sit up and pay attention and ask, “What are You saying to me?”

So here are two thoughts to ponder:

1.  The Israelites got to Marah and began to grumble and complain in spite of the unceasing provision and protection of the Lord.  Could the wood thrown into the bitter waters symbolize a ‘root of bitterness’ that had sprung up from all their complaining?

Hebrews 12:15 (NIV84) “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”

Deuteronomy 29:18 (NIV84) “Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.”

Consider the thought that when they threw their ‘point of poison’ (root of bitterness) into the water, healing came.

2.  Then here’s what Mark Batterson said:

One of the most fascinating miracles in the gospels is Jesus cursing the barren fig tree.  Most of the other miracles bring life. This one brings death.  Most of them pronounce blessing.  This one is a curse in a sense.  All of us have barren fig trees that undermine our spiritual productivity.  We need to curse them!  You need to kill what is killing you.  If you really want to come to life, then barren fig trees need to die!

So essentially I’m hearing that we all have dead wood in our lives that is fruitless and needs to be ‘cut down and thrown into the fire’.  We’ve all heard that.  After all, Jesus even said it:

Matthew 7:19 (ESV)  “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Ready for the fire!

But back to the pastor at Crossgates who said the log could also represent the Cross.  He went on to say that we often can’t see the work of the Cross because of a root (or tree) of bitterness in our lives.

I believe the same principles apply here as in my blog on rejection.  We need to go back to the point or event where the bitterness entered, renounce it, repent of it, and cast it into the ‘living waters’ and healing will come.  I know this sounds simplistic, but I can tell you from personal experience….it works!

So often we fight the symptoms without ever getting to the root of the problems in our lives.  Symptoms are things like addiction, depression, anger, and even illness, but if we go back to the point at which the door was opened to the enemy and the ‘root of bitterness’ sprang up, we can apply the ax to the root.

Matthew 3:10 (ESV) “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

And what’s the result when we do this?

Exodus 15:25 (ESV) “And he cried to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.”

Be sure to note the phrase in the above verse, “the LORD showed him a log”!  What log is the Lord showing you today that needs to be thrown into the waters?  If we ask, He’ll take us right to the root.  After all, He desires our healing even more than we do.

Dead Wood

Hebrews 12:15 (NIV84) “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”

Selah.

I read this today in a devotion by Neil Anderson and thought it was worth sharing:

Furthermore, it is important to know that God is under no obligation to us. There is no way you can cleverly word a prayer so that God must act on your behalf. If God declares something to be true, you simply believe Him and live according to what is true. If God didn’t say it, no amount of faith in the world will make it so. Believing doesn’t make God’s Word true; His Word is true, therefore I believe it.

So many times we say we believe God, but do we really?  I think my favorite verse in Scripture is Jeremiah 32:27 (NIV84)  which says,

“I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?

I really believe Him when He says this!  Do you?

One of the things I love to teach a new believer is ‘who they are in Christ’.  When a believer understands their identity, it can make all the difference in their walk with the Lord. But I’ve learned that often Christians can’t grasp the truths of ‘who they are’ because of a ‘spirit of rejection’ that many times enters through painful events in childhood, or even in the womb (unwanted child, accidental pregnancy, etc.)

When I took a counseling course a couple of years ago, I learned that no matter our background, we all have the same wounds.  Every person in the class, coming from a multitude of backgrounds, had the same ‘root’ issues that had caused problems throughout their lives.  Rich or poor; black or white; terrible dysfunction or a relatively ‘normal’ upbringing….all of us had the same root issues.  The Lord showed me rejection was essentially a taproot (a central vertical root from which other roots grow horizontally).

The spirit of rejection causes a believer to be unable to receive teaching about their identity (whether consciously or unconsciously).  They simply reject the Truth because it’s blocked by the spirit of rejection that tells them they are unworthy.  I believe it’s important to ask the Lord to reveal the place in life where rejection first entered, ask Jesus to go back to that place with us (in our mind and heart), and symbolically close the door that was opened to this spirit.  When this is done by a believer by faith in the Name of Jesus, the open door has to close!  That will then clear the way for Him to open the door for His Truth about our identity to be received.  The Word tells us,

Revelation 3:7 (NIV84)  “To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of Him who is holy and true, Who holds the key of David. What He opens no one can shut, and what He shuts no one can open.

We’ve all experienced rejection.  Feeling rejected is one of the most heartbreaking of all human emotions because God created us to love and be loved.  Scripture tells us that we are loved, adopted and accepted, but the accuser assigns rejection to ‘steal’ those truths away from us.

John 10:10 (ESV) “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

Rejection takes place in one of two ways: it really did happen or a person perceives it happened.  I’ve read that approximately 60-70 percent of all rejection is imagined. The spirit of rejection will take every expression, word, sound, etc. and twist it to make one feel rejected.

In addition, rejection is a form of unbelief that tells us that we are not accepted by God and in order to be accepted we first have to be accepted by men. It sets up man as our god by declaring that who we are and who we are not rests on the opinion of another who either accepts us or does not.

We must begin to accept ourselves as God has accepted us from the foundation of the world.  When we listen to rejection, we are making the words of man to be truth and the words of God to be a lie.

Romans 3:4a (AMP) “By no means! Let God be found true though every human being is false and a liar…”

Rejection can be defeated!  Scripture says the Lord Himself has accepted us. This is the foundation for freedom from rejection because if God is for us, who can be against us?

Romans 8:31 (ESV) “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”

God’s love and acceptance are antidotes to rejection.  To reverse rejection we must accept His love and acceptance without exception.  My dad often said, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it!”  According to the Word of God, we are designed and created on purpose for His pleasure because He knew us before the very foundation of the world.

We have to know who we are in Christ!  God has accepted us, but we must also accept ourselves.  Self-rejection, self-hatred, guilt, unloving spirits, and emotions will all tell us that we are not ‘accepted in the Beloved’.

Ephesians 1:6 (KJV) “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.”

We know Jesus dealt with rejection because Isaiah 53 says clearly “He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (vs. 3).  He modeled for us that we could defeat rejection and refuse to allow it to be a part of our lives.  In His strength and through the work of the Holy Spirit (the Counselor), God will be there to meet us and close the door to rejection.  Only then can we be free to have the abundant life and peace He has promised!  Will you let Him?

Print by Rob Leuschke.

I have gotten to the “Humility” track of the course I’m taking taught by Francis Frangipane.  OUCH is all I can say.

While I do know that I’m not nearly as arrogant as I used to be :-), as I study through the humility of Jesus, I am so aware of my need for more of Him and thus, more humility.

Think about this as quoted from one of my lessons:

“In the beginning of our walk, we embraced life in our own strength, trusting in our own skills for success and attainment.  Yes, we turned to God, but mainly in times of grief or trial.  But as the Lord brings us into maturity, what we once considered strengths are actually discovered to be more subtle and, therefore, more dangerous weaknesses.  Our pride and self-confidence keep us from God’s help; the clamor of our many ideas and desires drown the whisper of the still small voice of God.  Indeed, in God’s eyes, the best of human successes are still ‘wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked’ (Rev. 3:17).

In time, we discover that all true strength, all true effectiveness—yes, our very holiness itself—begins with discovering our need.  We grow weaker, less confident in our abilities.  As the outer shell of self-righteousness crumbles, Jesus Himself becomes God’s answer to every man who cries for holiness and power in his walk.”

WOW, huh?  Those words strike such a chord with me because it’s so true.  “Pride and SELF-confidence keep us from God’s help; the clamor of our many ideas and desires DROWN the whisper of the still small voice of God.”  I can see how this one sentence was my lifestyle for so long.  It wasn’t until I ‘slowed down, got quiet, and began to listen’ that I really began to grow.

To begin with, I simply made a commitment to get up earlier in the morning to spend time with Him in His Word.  At that point, I had lots of ideas and lots of desires.  I did that for years before I really began to lay down those ideas and desires and ask Him for His!  When I did this, I began to recognize His voice much more clearly.  From there I began just sitting with Him and waiting for Him to speak His ideas and desires.  That step has revolutionized my walk with Him and gradually has caused my ideas and desires to line up with His.  But oh, do I have a long way to go!!  I don’t want to stop short of ALL He has for me in this lifetime.

Francis Frangipane goes on to say,

“We may think we have spiritual gifts, we may presume we are holy, we may rejoice with human successes, but until we see Christ and abandon our reliance upon our self-righteousness, all we will ever have, at best, is religion.”

Just so you know….I don’t want ‘religion’.  There are many ‘religions’ out there and quite frankly, religion may temporarily satisfy…but it will never fulfill our God-given longings.  Satisfy or fulfill?  Big difference!!  Only a personal relationship with Jesus Christ Himself will meet the deep desires of our hearts.  And that relationship begins, I believe, with humility.

Selah. (Pause and calmly think about that.)

Selah at the end of many of the Psalms means to ‘pause, and calmly think of that’.  That’s what I’d like you to do with what I share today.  I doubt what I have on my mind today will ‘set well’ with some but it is what it is.

I was having a conversation with the Lord yesterday (yes, prayer is TWO-way conversation!) and He began to talk to me about sports.  Now it was pretty funny in a way because I do NOT like sports.  But here is what I believe He said to me:

I know you think it’s funny that I used a ball playing illustration with you.   I know you don’t like sports.  Actually you don’t like the ‘spirit of competitiveness’ in sports, or games in general.  You always want to play for the fun of the game like when you play Scrabble.  Winning is not your chief goal, or your aim at all, it’s just the connection with your friends.  So just know, I’m not crazy about the ‘spirit of competition’ either (it’s killing churches by the way).  Of course, we know who is fostering this spirit–the one who has been in competition with Me from eternity past.  He wanted My glory.  And what is that but competition?  Why do you think sports have become such ‘big business’?  Who would you think is behind that?  The ‘biggest of the big’ games is this weekend, the Super Bowl.  Where’s the focus, even with My children, on that day?  Is it on Me or a game?  You get the picture don’t you?

I may be a little slow, but I’d never considered the fact that satan was in competition with God.  Yes, I knew he had a pride problem, but the competitive spirit had to have been there because he wanted what God had.  To my recollection, I’ve never heard this thought preached but then rarely (or ever in my case) do you hear a message on competition.  After all it’s what our world runs on (including our churches)!

God desires that what breaks His heart will break ours too.  Does the ‘spirit of competitiveness’ in our country break your heart?

Just asking….

I’ve been pondering Isaiah 64:6 for several days and how our world has gotten so mixed up on this point…we’ve been taught that our ‘performance’ is necessary to earn God’s favor when He tells us clearly that OUR righteousness is as filthy rags.

Isaiah 64:6  (AMP) For we have all become like one who is unclean [ceremonially, like a leper], and all our righteousness (our best deeds of rightness and justice) is like filthy rags or a polluted garment; we all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away [far from God’s favor, hurrying us toward destruction]. [Lev. 13:45, 46.]

We ‘know’ it’s all about Jesus and not us.  After all, how many times have you heard the phrase, “It’s not about me”…but our actions don’t seem to line up with our knowledge.  Deep down there is still a belief that I can earn His favor with the things I do.

Romans 10:3  (ESV) For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.

Consider this mindset with these examples as quoted from Mary Burleson:

If I have a quiet time in the morning, I will have a good day.

This ‘guarantee’ is held by many. They might not say they hold it as a guarantee but their many comments would indicate that they do:

• I wasn’t surprised that happened to me today. I didn’t have my quiet time.
• It was such a bad day. I didn’t have my quiet time.
• The devil got to me today because I didn’t put my armor on in my quiet time.
• I goofed. I read the newspaper before I read the Bible. My bad.
• God lets me know that He’s disappointed in me when I don’t have my quiet time.
• If I don’t have my quiet time in the morning, it doesn’t count.
• Oops. I forgot to pray for so-and-so in my quiet time. That wouldn’t have happened if I had prayed. I’ve apologized.
• If I don’t spend at least thirty minutes in bible reading and prayer, I’m not spiritually ready to meet the day.

Those are just a few of the comments I’ve heard over and over and have had many of them said to me and taught to me as scriptural truths.

None of the above are guarantees. In fact, if you look closely at most of them, you will see that the emphasis is on what I do so that I can guarantee a result. That’s just not true in scripture. The New Covenant teaches me that because Christ has done it all, I can be free and enjoy all the benefits.

The day that I realized that if I never have another quiet time the rest of my life that God will still love me and be close to me and never leave me and that was one of the most freeing days of my life. Then I could have a quiet time because I wanted to and enjoyed it and if I missed having one, nothing changed. Wow, what freedom is that?

There’s a big difference in you have to or  you are invited to. Another way to say this is this is an opportunity, not an obligation.

The above quote came from a blog post in 2008 and it changed my way of thinking on a lot of things back then….however, our subtle enemy then creeps in with more deception in more subtle ways.  That’s why we must stay on guard!  But I love the way she put it…..”we have ‘opportunities’ that will surely deepen our relationship with the Lord, but not ‘obligations’.”

We can’t increase His love for us by anything we do, but we can increase our personal intimacy with Him!  It’s like any friendship….the time you spend getting to know a friend, the better you know them and the deeper the relationship becomes.  Sometimes a friend doesn’t respond the way you would like, but Jesus is the perfect friend!  These verses sum up the desire of my heart for my relationship with Him:

Exodus 33:11 (ESV) Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses (Ann) face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

James 2:23  (ESV) “and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham (Ann) believed God, and it was counted to him (her) as righteousness”–and (s)he was called a friend of God. “

I want to be His friend, but it won’t be because of my righteousness, but because of His.  However, it WILL be because I make a choice to ‘believe Him’.

Hebrews 11:6  (KJV) But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

I’ve chosen to believe that my works (righteousnesses) are as ‘filthy rags’, but I love Him so much that I’ve also chosen to ‘diligently’ apply myself to ‘grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (2 Peter 3:18).  And this takes us back to ‘Christlikeness’.  God’s will for us is Christlikeness…is that your highest aim in your walk with the Lord?

Our righteousness is as filthy rags....