"search me"

We see very little in scripture concerning self examination, and much in the way of seeking God to search us. When a man approaches the Lord's supper, he must examine himself, but Paul clarifies later, this is to see Christ in us. Christ does not dwell in reprobates, and a reprobate is not to partake.

More is said by men to examine ourselves than by God, and this should alarm us. Why is this?

When a man examines himself he see with a mans eyes. He see what reason, intellect, his limited knowledge, and over all, himself sees. Self searching self, and self cannot change self, no matter the observation.

When God searches a man, that man is truly searched. That which makes manifest is light, and God is light. There is no darkness in light. The most dangerous prayer a man can pray is "search me o God", because when the light truly shines, everything is laid bare.

Self will only examine what it's checklists and standards tells it to examine, and the first reaction to self realization is self trying to justify that it's deeds are right and good. A man turning inward to himself in order to judge right from wrong, holiness from unholiness, will quickly find that he can do nothing but condemn himself for it. Self cannot set free.

There is no value in turning within unless we are looking for what Paul tells the Corinthian saints to find, Christ within. The Holy Spirit will never simply leave us in our findings and to our own devices to deal, He will deal with us, and what He finds.

The power for deliverance, purity (being unmixed), and a single eye toward Jesus is only found from the Holy Spirit within, the blood shed for the forgiveness of sins, and the Christ life being allowed to manifest itself through us.

Leave off self, so much that you only trust God to search you. The blood cleanses, the resurrected and Glorified Savior within sets free as He lives His life in us.

Don't you know, that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you be reprobates?

"apart from me you can do nothing"

Paul spoke of preaching Christ. If anyone could exhort men with endless lists of dos and donts, certainly it was the Pharisees of Pharisees. Paul walked blameless in the law, yet still penned Romans 7. Paul still moved men by the millions, right up until today, to Jesus while being a stuttering fool in the eyes of the world. Paul said bluntly, I preach Christ.

I find more and more everyday that everything in the bible, from cover to cover, leads directly back to Jesus. From creation to consumation, all is through Christ and to Christ. Nothing exists except He upholds it with His word. One day every knee will bow, and every tongue confess, Christ.

Why is it than that men preach so much of duty, holiness, what they and others should be doing, and preach about men and the world so much? Whether preached against or preached in favor of, men still preach themselves en masse today.

Have we forgotten that Jesus is our righteousness, sanctification, redemption, wisdom, life, hope, and in Him we already have every spiritual blessing?

How can a man, calling himself a Christian, say he has any lack at all? Does he not have Christ?

Oh but Paul said he filled up what was lacking in Christs afflictions, the carnal contrarian mumbles (Paul lived the life of an intercessor, forgetting himself, and never thinking of needing more, he had Christ).

I beg you dear saint, by the mercies of God, look to the Son of God for all that you need. The one you seek tells you that when you come to Him you will never hunger again. Jesus, the risen and glorified Savior, is the one that said when you drink of Him you will never thirst again.

Why is their so much hunger and thirst at the Lord's table? Does He not feed you? Does He not give you to drink?

Why do we slander His name by always looking to the world to see if we love it? Why are we always looking to sin to see if we live in it? Why are we always looking to self to see if it's dead?

Why are we looking away from Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, to these other things, and than wondering why we have no victory?

When a man truly sees the depths of his weakness, he will never look there again. Christ is all, and apart from Him you can do nothing, but you can do all things through the strength He gives you.

What you lack can never be found from hating the fact you don't have it, or trying to get it, or making sure you don't lose it. This is mans way, the broad way, and leads to destruction.

Jesus is the narrow path, Himself. Only Him and nothing else. Not your devotion. Not your consecration. Not your experience. Not even your faith.

Not Jesus first, but Jesus only.

Apart from the living Christ, the crucified, risen and glorified God, you can do absolutely nothing.

"I never knew you"

In the same way that a cockroach scurries into the cover of darkness, so to does a man when the light of the world is shown. In this day of busyness and activity, knowledge and progress, to suggest a living Christ is anathema, and men scatter like cockroaches at the mere mention to take cover in the light of their comfortable religion.

I've noticed, in the many and varied way men have expounded this scripture, that they either focus on the lawlessness, or make knowing a mere doctrinal tip of the hat to Jesus, so that they can continue on in their comfort and philosophy.

Lawlessness in the teaching of Jesus is simply speaking of men that do not have the law written on their hearts in spiritual circumcision. The scalpel of the Holy Spirit has not done it's work to make them new creatures, so all they end up being is hypocrites with a few good doctrines and sayings.

But to know! What joy it is to know. To know implies relationship. To know implies life. To know changes everything.

Men will nod and smile broadly with hearty amens until you suggest that Christ is living today, right now, as you read this. He lives and seeks men to indwell by the Holy Spirit. He is no longer dead. He is alive.

To believe in the truth of scripture is an ascent with more gravitas than many realize. But to believe in the living Word, the word who is God, the faithful and true knower of hearts and thoughts, this my friends is the summit of all beliefs. To believe in the living Christ is the line in the sand.

Who are they who deny the resurrection? It's a tragic thing indeed when you come to realize that many more deny it in practice than in doctrine. If Christ is risen and the Bible be true, everything changes, and everything then becomes much more serious. If Christ is the risen Lord, and the scriptures that speak of Him be true, no one will escape His gaze, His judgment, His love, His gospel. Whether to glory or hell, we must all come to see that everything culminates in the glorious and living Son of God, Jesus Christ the righteous.

But what is this we see in the Bible? This living Jesus seeks believers, men and women of faith, for His habitation? That He may dwell in their hearts by faith? Christ in you? Christ formed in you? What a ridiculous doctrine! This is obviously just Paul and his literary flourish. It's not literal.

I find this the common response when even those who rely on being "fully consecrated" believers are confronted with this literal doctrine of Pauls.

I never knew you Jesus says. It doesn't matter what you know about the living Jesus, or how fully consecrated you were, or how many demons you cast out, or how many rules you kept, or how many sermons you listened to, or how many hours you prayed, or how many chapters you read in your devotional time this morning.

I never KNEW you. To know Jesus is to have Him as your life. The very one that animates your being, no longer I, but Christ. Lost in oneness with the living Lord, the risen Son of God. In Christ yes, but Christ in us.

I never knew you. Why? Because for Jesus to increase, I must decrease. Death brings resurrection, and all the believer is must die for the "one spirit" life of Christ in me. No more self even in my religion.

Consecration? Jesus calls us to die. Life comes from God and is therefore offensive to men and their religion because they can't get it themselves, it has to be given.

To know is to live, and for me to live is Christ.

"a good showing in the flesh"

Have you noticed how much of the current curriculum of Christian teaching is simply things to do? Different methods of self examination and 10 new rules to condemn yourself with! 5 new things to judge everyone around you against and make sure your as bitter as possible! Here is 16 reasons you're not as carnal as that guy over there... Or maybe more carnal than he is, if that's your thing. We have something for everyone, no matter who you want to condemn, or who you want exalt, next Sundays message, 5 ways to tell if you love the world, will help you not only pacify your own conscience, but you can give it to that fella you know next door so he knows God hates his TV!

Christianity has reduced itself down to just more rules and regulations, salesmanship and manipulation. Why is it that men can only seem to find themselves in a book so filled with Christ?

Here is where I get accused of hypocrisy. Don't you say even if you preach against it your not preaching Christ? You would be right. You found your excuse to ignore me, with your fault finding, and ironically proved my point.

The garden had 2 trees that were written about. One gave knowledge of good and evil, the other gave life. I'm curious what tree most of us would eat from if we were forced to just ball up every Christian book, sermon, article on holiness and obedience, and be forced to pick the tree based on the law of averages - man would fall all over again.

I can't say why humanity is so obsessed with judging things and setting everything up as opposite to something else. But God tells us why, or rather, tells us who dupes mankind into wanting to be as God, eating from that tree.

You still to this day have 2 options. The first is the knowledge of good and evil - always seeking for who is right, best, holiest, or more often than that, wrong, worst, and most unholy.

The second option is life. A life with God where Christ dwells within, who is our life. A life where we see this world as God sees it - infinite possibility and millions of people created in His image that need redemption and salvation, and millions of His children that need freeing from Satans schemes to trick them into eating from that forbidden tree, over and over again.

God is love, and love sees things in a vastly different way than just good and evil. Perhaps that's for another day, after we have all gotten to our faces in repentance and changed our minds about some things.

"but fails at one point, is guilty of all"

How often men will make their relationship to God dependant on things and duties, rather than the finished work of Jesus. The sinister part of this, they rarely even know they do it. The devil is wily and clever, and will easily outsmart someone seeking to make a good showing in the flesh, even to the point where he tricks them into believing they do well.

The rule of law is simply this: if you think you can, than do it, all of it.

Christians have a bad habit of cherry picking only what suits them, especially when it comes to devotion to God. Many pulpits will make a believer feel as if He is only actually right with God when fulfills certain duties. The "morning watch" devotional time is perhaps the worst offender.

Have you ever met a believer that feels that if they miss a devotional time than nothing could possibly go right for them? They may not say it outright, but everything about them says it, they don't need to use the words. They have set up a law that governs their relationship to God, or at least how they feel about it.

The list of these duties is endless, especially in holiness circles. But James says, unless you do it all, you're guilty of all. It's a trick of Satan to pull believers into the flesh, thinking that what they do has any impact on how God feels about them, and the paradox is, when a believer enters into this carnal, legalistic mindset, he ends up living in the exact opposite way he desires (see Galatians and Romans 7).

You can set up rules and regulations for yourself and those around you, but it will never result in your holiness. In fact, it will always result in your sinning, and all of the works of the flesh are quickly to follow when you walk in the legalistic flesh.

We tend to forget Paul was an actual human being. What we read during our devotional times, he wrote. He never wrote a single epistle thinking "this will be read for generations to come, eventually being canonized as holy scripture". Paul lived a very human life, animated and empowered by Christ within, and out of that life he lived, he wrote. He lived his life in unconscious holiness and completely self forgetting devotion to the living Jesus.

The point I am making is simply this: if our doctrine cannot be true for all, it is not true at all. Can we preach a mandatory scripture reading regime and quiet time schedule to a prisoner for the Lord? When should someone enslaved to a government, with every waking hour supervised and controlled by a whip yielding master, spend his morning watch in complete lonesome devotion to God?

What if the believer has no Bible? Abraham had no scriptures.

What if the believer is inundated by things that prevent him from praying in some secret space for long periods of time?

The new testament is filled with perfectly livable commands for all, in any circumstance. The trick is knowing and living out of the life of the living Jesus. Life is very different than devotion. Life is always, devotion is set aside time.

I have no answer because God works in all those that are His, within their circumstances and lives. Those that know Him, know life. We are never in a position where we can press rule and standards on the sons of God. We have clearly outlines moral principles in scripture that need absolutely no interpretation, they just need to be relayed. But even these are fruit of the Christ life within, fruit of the spirit, fruit of the abiding life of the branch in the vine.

Never take what a man tells you as your standard of living. Simply abide in the living Jesus, the true vine, and He will make sure that, whatever your circumstance may be, you will know Him and the power of His resurrection.

"that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith"

Much is said about the reception of the Holy Spirit. Tarry here and loose your tongue until you speak some language you have never spoken. Tarry there and agonize and work up tears and conviction of sin and God might do something. Tarry with that person so he can do something that might work, and God might do something than. Pray harder and longer, surrender more completely, read that person's experience or that other guys, because my theology doesn't completely agree with the first one.

Our knowledge is our down fall. I heard it said that God made man in His own image, and man, ever the gentleman, returned the favor. Throughout scripture we see God acquiescing to sinful humans, even bearing their reproach when world around them sees Him like they would any other heathen god, decimating people groups and sniffing burning animals. So much of scripture is in fact what not to do, and I don't mean the "thou shalt nots", I mean the dim and foreshadowing ways Israel saw the God who would eventually tear the veil and finally reveal Himself completely in Jesus. We see bright spots in the prophets and others when they saw through the kings, judges, and law and foresaw the glorious savior. But those glimpses, at least those that are smack on the nose, are rare.

God is not what we make Him, but what he reveals Himself to be in Jesus. We can so easily look to the old covenant and think that God is pleased with those sacrifices and try to work up some new covenant system to emulate it, tarrying, praying, consecrating, and yet forget all about Jesus, who is God.

Why wasn't the Holy Spirit given? Because the believer didn't consecrated himself fully enough? Or was it because our tarrying wasn't long enough? Maybe because we didn't read that certain theologian and do exactly as he said?

The Holy Spirit wasn't given because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Once again man comes in with his intellect and says, "I guess I have to do something to glorify Jesus and I'll receive the Holy Spirit".

Jesus has been glorified for 2000 years. That is already accomplished. In the words of Jesus Himself, "It is finished".

He died, was buried, and rose from the dead to forever live and be glorified at the Fathers right hand. You can't do a thing to glorify Jesus, and Jesus Himself said as much. Our fruit glorifies the Father, but our fruit is not even our fruit, we just think it is.

So if it's all accomplished and finished, what must we do?

Believe in the finished work of Jesus, because no outward show of piety will do a thing for you, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision will avail you anything, but a new creation. Ironically everyone who has received the Holy Spirit has only ever received Him by faith and because of Jesus. Everything they did only led them to finally stop doing those things when they realize how pointless and worthless they are. It all leads to faith in Christ, but man still, for some reason, looks to self effort and flesh.

Having begun in the spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?

"Though He slay me"

How often believers get trapped in soulish religion rather than spiritual faith. It is so often preached that the goal is the mountaintop, when all to often the mountain top is merely the thunderings of Sinai. The pulpit can easily make it seem like the Christian life is all rapture and glory, when in reality it's an enduring faith through the repetitive daily lives we find as our God ordained circumstances.

The life of Jesus is proof of this. We only see one transfiguration, one descent of the Holy Spirit, but over and over again we see the multitudes pressing in and power going out. We see a wearied and soul stricken Jesus, following His Father through the hell scape of human existence and drinking the cup of His will.

The soul of the believer (intellect, emotions, etc.) is often touted as the seat of God's dealing with man. How much bondage is found in dwelling in the soul life. While it is true that God deals with our souls, it is also true that the psalmist cries for his soul to be still.

Soulish religion depends on emotion, feeling, intellect, doing things to please God; and therefore fails the second we don't feel right, are stricken with a hint of doubt, condemn ourselves for some perceived wrong, or any other number of things. Soulish religion can never endure reality, because reality and life crush the soul more often than not.

Spiritual life is a life of faith. Walking with a trust in the promises of God and the finished work of Jesus. Faith looks around and sees through the physical world and sees hope and love, sees God working in all circumstances and people, and decries feeling and doing with a steadfast devotion to, and reliance on the Father. Life in the spirit is a life of faith.

Isn't it ironic that we feel farthest from God when we think we are doing the most for God? It's always in activity when men feel they need more of God. Soul presses you into self effort, and it's always evident when the yoke is heavy.

Faith says even if we feel 100 miles from God, and feel as if life is falling apart and nothing is going right, yet will I bless Him. Faith brings rest because faith that looks to Jesus disregards feeling and circumstances, emotion and doubt. Faith says even if I never feel your presence again, never receive another answer to prayer, and end up in hell at the end of it, I will still believe and trust.

The crucified life is a life that can endure the "my God, why have you forsaken me" and still end up in resurrection and a glorified seat on the throne.

ESchaible,

_________________
Jade

"I believe, help my unbelief"

Honesty is a rare treasure in circles that call themselves Christian these days. We have forsaken reality for well meaning piety. As long as we say the right things, even if we don't believe it in our depths, we think our profession is genuine. This may work in conversation with man who's vision is only skin deep, but what about in conversation with He who knows your thoughts and intentions?

Jesus treasured the honesty of the man who held fast in faith in spite of his soul doubt. The soul cries against the life of faith until it is sanctified. Doubts, and all manner of pressure come from without. Faith is from within, Christ in you.

Just like a man cannot love God who is invisible if he is unable to love his brother who he sees, how much more is man unable to be honest with God when he doesn't even have the ability to walk in real and authentic fellowship with his brethren?

Looking and sounding pious and doctrinally correct has become more important than being an authentic expression of Christ in us. When a man can simply bear his heart to the Father and in honesty tell him what He already knows, he will see the glory of God. Beware of self seeking religion, only seeking things from God. Seek the person of Jesus, because many people are reciting perfectly sound doctrine in hell.

Reality and honesty are perhaps the greatest needs of this modern, fake, online world we live in. When we can honestly come to the Father with our state, and lay all things at His feet, only then will growth in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus possible.

God will leave you to your delusions if you come to Him with them, but will always use them to teach you deep lessons you could never learn other wise. If you come to the Father in unreality, trying to sound pious rather than real, He will honor your piety and let it humiliate you until you are in a place of brokenness. He is patient, and will never force Himself on someone who thinks they have it all together. Eventually the pride of spiritual life will come crashing down, and you will realize that Jesus is all things, and has nothing to give you apart from Himself. He is not in the business of giving men things, He will only ever give Himself.

Lord you are all things to me, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption, love, power, glory; live them out through me and as me in the world today.

"that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us"

The crying need of this hour is seeing and hearing. Seeing implies something very different than looking. To look is to observe, to see is to perceive. Just the same there are two hearings, and motive makes the difference. One hears only to seek his own reply, the other hears to understand and obey. The litmus test of which of these we each employ is whether or not we have the corresponding experience, because if we don't than we have neither seen nor heard.

The vast majority of professors of faith these days seem to have heard without ever hearing. This is proven by the devaluation of testimony and the exaltation of doctrine. When a man in a meeting can testify to what he has seen and heard, and consequently be cast aside as fanatical because something that was said may have been deemed unorthodox, we have lost the entirety of what Jesus died to provide us.

Jesus rebuked those that threw around doctrinal nuggets and sought the security of sound thinking and than turned around and told other men that they must be born a second time. He never once looked upon those who sought to follow him through the lens of what creed they held, because those that held most staunchly to creeds sought not to follow, but to trick Him. They were coiled vipers seeking a reason to crucify Him.

Experience is in fact the one thing all those who are truly born again share together, because being born again is in fact experience with the living Jesus, not doctrine. No man is able to testify concerning what he learns and parses, only what he sees and hears.

The irony is in the fact that when a man truly experiences God, whether it be some life changing cross borne, or the new birth, out of the woodwork come little Pharisees seeking to trip him up with questions and phrases like, "we mustn't exalt experience above scripture" or "even the devil can give you experiences" (strange how alike these accusations are to those Pharisaical accusations leveled at Jesus).

How pious they sound with their savour of death, but I say if a man experiences God let him seek the Lord and then tell us all what he has seen and heard that we too may have fellowship in the glory (isn't this the gift of prophecy? [not the office of prophet]).

Never be afraid of labels given to you by those that have not what you were given. Always be weary and ready to acknowledge it was given, we have nothing we have not received. The new birth is an experience. Sanctification and union is an experience. Experience is everywhere, throughout all scripture and Christian biography. Dry dogma kills, but Jesus, the quickening Spirit, brings only life.

Mystic is an insult thrown around by those who have no pallette to taste the divine mercies that flow from the throne. Never take that title as an insult, but never seek it either. If it's given to you, receive it with joy as it means the Lord has shown you a great mercy despite your unworthiness. Bow before the Lord and seek Him for His own sake; never settle for anything less than Jesus Himself.