Dear…
You have searched me, Lord, and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise.
Psalm 139:1-2
The lyrics of this Abba song ¨Knowing me, knowing you,¨ reminisces about the days of joy of a once loving relationship but now no more. And the need to move on.
Is this a reflection of the relationship many of us have with our Lord Jesus Christ?
As I reflect on my daily behavior, in the presence of our Lord, His Spirit often convicts me of the things that I have done wrong. The anger, the impatience, the lusts, the pride, the envy, the judgement, the self righteousness, the fear and a whole litany of actions, thoughts and attitudes that far from reflect Christ in my life.
Psalm 139:1-2 attests to the omnipresent and Sovereign God.
What then can possibly explain our waywardness?
- We do not believe God really exists?
- We believe He exists but thinks He is not omnipotent, so we can hide our sins from Him.
- We believe He is so loving that He will close an eyes to our transgressions or is ready to forgive without expecting any consequences from our sins
- We are just too distracted to even be concerned about His presence.
If it is none of the above, what then can possibly explain our lukewarm relationship to total disregard for our ever present Lord?
Is it because our hearts are self deceiving, and our enemy, the devil is a master of delusion and deceit.
This is a fact, and much as God recognizes the challenges we face, He has also provided us with the solution to overcome them.
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
James 4:7
The Word of God commands us to
- Seek God always
- In His Word, in prayers, with a thankful heart and in His work
As Hebrews 4:11-12 rightly pointed out. Submission is only possible when we enter the rest of our Lord.
Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. For the Word of God is living and powerful…
Hebrews 4:11-12
This life of diligent submission of our all in the presence of our Lord brings us out of dependence upon our finite and self deceiving understanding, to one of total dependence upon the leading of the Holy Spirit. We literally spit out the sinful fruit of knowledge that Adam and Eve ate in defiance of the will of God. The hold of the devil upon man is already broken on the cross. Yet many of us cannot step out of the wide open prison gates because of the delusionary hold that the devil has on us the freed man. We can only do so when we allow the light of Godś grace and power to shine upon us by coming into His presence.
….because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.
1 Timothy 2:13
Most of us live in the natural world much as there is a spiritual realm.
God is Spirit. We know Him not through the natural senses, but through our spirit man.
The communion with the Lord our God can only come from Him. But that only happens if we are willing to seek Him.
1 Timothy 4:1
On a similar vein, what we often attribute as emotional behavior are the undue influence of evil spirits at work. Be it anger, pride, envy, lusts and whatever that moves us away from our Lord.
But the devil will never manifest itself to us in its true form, for such delusions work well when we look upon it with our finite understanding, without realizing the machinations of the evil spiritual forces behind it. The devil only manifest itself in times of desperation, when it knows that its lies and deceit no longer works on us, and a more visual unveiling of its grotesqueness may hopefully bring us back to its fold. And let me share a recent experience a week back.
By the grace of God, at 10.30pm every night, my senses like clockwork, always start to go into drowse mode, and I have no issue having a peaceful uninterrupted sleep.
But last night was one of those rare occasions that I went to bed a mite later at 11.10pm, having engaged my son on the merits and pitfalls of collecting expensive timepieces, a new interest amongst his friends.
Counting sheep is a myth at least for me. But experiencing manifestations of evil presences is a fact I have had the privilege of, though thankfully from the perspective of a fearful man, its few and far in between.
Last night was one that tried as I would, I could not sleep. And in the midst of a keenly awaken mind, in the still of the night when the rest of the family was fast asleep, I sensed a familiar approaching force, that raises the goose pimples and evokes the foreboding of fear.
Not new, as I have experienced it for a continuous period of 2 weeks while serving in the military years back, and once in my previous abode, after sharing the gospel with a committed non Christian. A force that tries to encapsulate oneś physical being, and pure human efforts on our part to push it away is impossible. Our natural voice emits no sound much as one tries But in that straitjacket oppression, much as I know about Christ yet did not really know Him, in my desperation, in calling upon Him with all my might from the heart, the oppression was lifted as the unseen but very real evil presence left me.
Last night the presence was the same. But my response was different.
When the evil one seeks to manifest itself upon the faithful, it is a sign of desperation on its part.
The subtle undue influences that many of us do not associate with sin and evil spiritual influences be it the spirit of anger, pride, lusts, fear, impatience, greed….works best on us when we look at it as mere emotional characterization, rather than a devilish leading.
But when the devil knows that we have looked beyond its delusions, in its desperation, it will go on a no holds barred attempt to bring us back into its subjugation.
Christ called His twelve disciples to Him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness
Matthew 10:1
With hindsight experience, and imperfect as I am, I know I am a child of God, and I have the power to call on the name of Christ to drive out evil spirits. And this I did and the approaching sense of foreboding left me and the peace of Christ returned to me.
Sleep I still could not but instead of the unsettled tossing, I took the time to pray and reflect upon events of the past few weeks. I asked the Lord to show me my imperfections, and His purposes for me, even as He brings me to a new season in my life. A new season that has unsettled the evil one.
And there is no creature hidden from His sight…….
Hebrews 4:13
Indeed God knows us. And in knowing Him. We learn to come to Him always, no matter how compelling it is for our finite self to want to deal with what is immediate, on our own strength and understanding.
God Blesses
Eng Hieang
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