There is a simplicity in all that God does. God has a way of speaking a simple Word over your life that gives you something in your heart that you know is your destiny to fulfill. What a wonderful blessing this truth is!
When you have read the life of Paul, you realize that God's first words to Ananias concerning Paul were fulfilled. when God told Ananias to lay hands on Paul, He said, "I will show you what great things he must suffer for My name's sake" (Acts 9:16 ). Then a whole life of suffering followed; yet how beautifully Paul related to the Lord Jesus Christ in it. Christ came forth in his life through it.
And so we realize that God was not concerned about how many things a man could suffer; He was concerned about manifesting Himself through all of that suffering and about deepening that man's relationship to Himself.
The apostle Paul indeed suffered many things, but through all his suffering, the presence of the Lord was demonstrated in his life. God would never have permitted the sufferings in Paul's life to any occasion of grumbling and complaining.
Those sufferings were to glorify Himself. God would never have allowed Paul to suffer so that he could say, "See how much I am suffering." In one instance in his letter to the Corinthians where he spoke about all the things he had suffered, he said, "I speak as a fool" ( II Corinthians 11:23 ). To him it seemed foolish even to recount what he had gone through in his sufferings.
The references to Paul's life, as well as other references in the Scriptures, reveal a very important truth. You will find that having a right spirit is related to the fulfillment of God's will in your life. God will never let you fulfill the things that He has promised for your life until you are prepared to do them with a right Spirit. Some people receive prophecies over their lives, and the next day they start walking in them. Other people with the same words for their lives, and with the same anointing and the same confirmation, cannot move; they cannot fulfill God's will. Year after year goes by and that Word is unfulfilled. Finally, after utter disaster in their lives, they come to the place where they begin to do the will of the Lord.
What keeps us from instant fulfillment? What keeps us from doing the will of the Lord with all our heart? The answer is within our own spirit. It is not really a matter of how many words God has spoken over a church, or what Word He has brought forth in the earth, or what people He has anointed and commissioned to fulfill His Word. What really counts is how each person is walking with God. How are you walking with God? How is your spirit?
We all may come to the place where instead of saying to a prophet, "How do you do," we will ask, "How do I do?" We will be more concerned about the things that are wrought in our own spirit. More than anything else, we will be concerned about our having a right spirit.
Faith has a way of bringing everything within our spirit to focus in submission and aggressive faith to do the will of the Lord. When a man's ministry does not work, look closely and you will see that his spirit was not actually right. It was not really the leading and the anointing of the Lord to fulfill the prophecy at that time because his spirit was not ready. The Word spoken over him was true; and when his spirit becomes right, he will have a glorious fulfillment.
There are many components of a right spirit. There must be an aggressive faith; there must be no withdrawal; there must be a willingness to sacrifice; there must be pure motivation; there must be a release from human ambition. To have a right spirit, there cannot be any bitterness in your spirit. A right spirit means that we have a broken and a contrite heart that God does not despise ( Psalm 51:17 ). David prayed, "Renew a right spirit within me. then I will teach transgressors Thy ways" ( verses 10, 13). The fulfillment of your ministry, the effectiveness and the fruitfulness that God wants to bring forth in your life, all begin with that renewal of a right spirit within your heart.
This truth may seem to be over-simplified in context with other truths that God has given; but we must deal with this need and pray, "Lord, what is in my spirit that hinders? What hinders me Lord? What is it in my spirit that is wrong?" It is very important to have a right spirit. The man who serves God in this hour must persistently keep his spirit open to God.
A right spirit has a focus on God and never alters its focus from God. If you have a wrong spirit, your spirit has been distracted and you are focused on something else. A person who has a wrong spirit focuses on a problem, or something someone said, or something that happened to him; his focus is not on the Lord. A right spirit focuses on God; a wrong spirit on something else.
Is something bothering you? Has something crippled you so that you are not functioning, you are not worshipping or moving ahead? Look to your spirit to see what is there. A right spirit focuses on God, but a wrong spirit focuses on circumstances, problems, and a number of other things.
The children of Israel murmured and complained. They did not like manna or anything else that God provided for them. Never once do we read that they were excited because of the pillar of fire, for the shekinah glory of God that was actually leading them. They did not focus on that- they focused on something else because their spirits were wrong.
Renew a right spirit in us O God.
No comments:
Post a Comment