Friday, December 16, 2011

Reflections on "My Utmost" December 16

"You have to wrestle against the things that prevent you from getting to God, and you wrestle in prayer for other souls; but never say that you wrestle with God in prayer, it is scripturally untrue."

This is an outrageous nonsense!

We believers sit in high places with Christ Jesus, at the right hand of the Father! (cf Ephesians 2:6)

We have received the grace of God that we may boldly enter the throne room of God!

"Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.

"For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

"Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:14 -16)

We are not exclusively responsible for interceding. We have a High Priest, Jesus Christ, who died for us and as us, that we may sit with Him in glory at the right hand of the Father forever.

Not only are we cleaned and cleared from all sin, but now we can prosper ourselves from our new standing. We are better than Esther, who risked her life to speak to King Darius in His court. If the King did not want to speak with anyone, all he had to do was speak the word, and the unwanted guest would have been executed!

But our King was executed in our stead, that we might be made not just holy, not just righteous, but THE righteousness of God, IN CHRIST!

"If you do wrestle with God, you will be crippled all the rest of your life. If, when God comes in some way you do not want, you take hold of Him as Jacob did and wrestle with Him, you compel Him to put you out of joint."

Jacob did not wrestle with the Lord because He wanted to best Him, but because He knew that he needed the blessings of the Lord. Jacob did not understand the irrepressible goodness of the Lord, the one who had blessed and honored Abraham, a man who simply believed on the Lord and did whatever the Lord told him to do!

Jacob struggled because he thought that he had to strive, connive, and deprive others in order to get the blessings of the Lord, even though the Lord had promised through Jacob's mother Rebekah that he would be blessed, and the elder brother -- Esau -- would serve the younger.

Jacob struggled for years not because God was not faithful to his promises, but rather because Jacob was not faithful to trust God to move in his life. Abram and Sarai struggled with this impatient unbelief when waiting for the child of promise. The result was a fraught surrogacy that engendered strife and dissension in the house of Abraham.

"Don’t be a hirpler in God’s ways, but be one who wrestles before God with things, becoming more than conqueror through Him. Wrestling before God tells in His Kingdom. If you ask me to pray for you and I am not complete in Christ, I may pray but it avails nothing; but if I am complete in Christ my prayer prevails all the time. Prayer is only effective when there is completeness – "Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God."

Oswald Chambers has fallen for the same "works-righteousness" heresy that has gripped and deprived the Body of Christ.

What does Paul say about being "complete in Christ"?

"And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:

"In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:

"Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead." (Colossians 2:10-12)

We are complete in Him, NOW -- from the moment that we believe in our hearts and confess out of our mouths that Jesus is Christ is Lord!

We do not have to work our way up our merit in some vapid manner completeness before the Lord.

If that is not enough proof for the believer, check out these awesome scriptures:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:" (Ephesians 1:3)

"I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;

"That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;" (1 Corinthians 1:4-5)

We are now, present tense, enriched in Christ, in all word, with all knowledge.

The problem is not that we lack anything, but that we must grow in gracious awareness of who we are and what we have in Him:

"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:

"The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints," (Ephesians 1:17-18)

Paul wished the same for his good friend Philemon:

"That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus." (v. 6)

We have everything in Christ, Jesus, in whom the fullness of the Godhead (cf Colossians 2:9) -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- dwells, and that dwells in us as we dwell in Him (cf John 15:1-4)

You just need to believe it, receive it by faith, and thus realize what He has already conceived (cf Galatians 4:19) and achieved (cf Ephesians 2:10; Philippians 2:13) That journey will take an eternity and then some- but do not let anyone convince that you need something more from God! He is ever supplying you all your needs (Philippians 4:19)

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