Here
is a present word from Oswald Chambers that really touched my heart
that I believe God is speaking to many Christian workers in this hour. I
feel the Lord wants me to share some comments with you after you read
this:
The Warning Against Desiring Spiritual Success
04/24/2014
Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you… —Luke 10:20
Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor is it sin. The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age in which we now live.
Never seek after anything other than the approval of God, and always be willing to go “outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Hebrews 13:13).In Luke 10:20, Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us do rejoice.
We have a commercialized view— we count how many souls have been saved and sanctified, we thank God, and then we think everything is all right. Yet our work only begins where God’s grace has laid the foundation. Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them.
Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others’ lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit.
As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God’s testimony to us as His workers. God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others.
Unless the worker lives a life that “is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), he is apt to become an irritating dictator to others, instead of an active, living disciple. Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to groups. But Jesus never dictates to us in that way.
Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an “if,” never with the forceful or dogmatic statement— “You must.” Discipleship carries with it an option.
What a word of instruction to us: I felt the Lord ask me to comment on this so I will below"
God warned me many years ago about what he would call"false ministry idolatry." False ministry idolatry forms in a heart when our "success" is built upon how God uses us and what we are accomplishing instead of "just being His". It forms when we "try" in our hearts" to be successful" in what we "think establishes" our worth by "proving our ministry."
Beloved's, I have seen many ministries rise and fall because of this issue. We can build and do great things for God and God not even be in it.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus said, "many will say in that day, Lord, Lord have we not prophesied in your name, cast out devils in your name..." Jesus said, "depart from me you workers of iniquity, I never knew you."
What could that mean for us as Christian Leaders today? What are the motives of our hearts in our service to God? Who is truly getting the glory for what we are doing, God or us?
Is our life in Christ that started out it's worth by being made by God Himself for His purposes, and our being bought by the blood of the lamb to prove that worth to redeem us, now being replaced by our "successful service" to God.
Depart from me you workers of iniquity means to always make sure with God that you are not "basing your worth" on how "God is using you." "Lord, Lord have we not... done all these things... in your name. Why did they need to boast about it to Him, since if it was from His heart for them to do, why "bring their works to him" as if "they initiated and did the work and not God?"
Is that not the heart of a Babel Religious system that says, Let us make bricks, let us build a city, let us build a tower that can reach into heaven. Let us make a name for ourselves?
Beloved's, God could build us up today and then remove it in a day, would we still love him above all things?
David was sure successful while in attendance to King Saul. He got to marry the Kings' Daughter, have a place at the Kings table, and was as close to where he would become king as he could have been.
Yet, He was being chased as far as he could be from the throne God promised him where he learns the true heart of all "work for God." He learns this hidden in a cave where he writes one of the most beautiful psalms is written:
1 The Lord is my Light and my Salvation—whom shall I fear or dread? The Lord is the Refuge and Stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.
3 Though a host encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, [even then] in this will I be confident.
4 One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek, inquire for, and [insistently] require: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord [in His presence] all the days of my life, to behold and gaze upon the beauty [the sweet attractiveness and the delightful loveliness] of the Lord and to meditate, consider, and inquire in His temple.
Today, it is popular to base our life "on how many people we are reaching for God." It is popular to base our success on our usefulness to God or even or ministry work." I am sure David had that temptation as well, but here in the cave far away from everything God reduces this man to 'one thing."
Here we see a "man after God's own heart" not after "men's hearts." David realizes why He is made to seek GOD, His heart, and live in His presence and dwell in the beauty of the Lord, or the Secret place of the Most High God.
His worth is not base on being King, it is not worth based on slaying Goliath, or defeating the enemies, that was just the "work God predestined him to do" His rejoicing was in his Lord that made him. His worth was based on the Lord Himself who called him to himself.
Beloved Christian Leader and Worker can we honestly say to God today, "one thing I desire of the Lord, that will I seek after, or does the "working for God" consume us? It would be good every once in a while to lay that work down before God to see if we have built wood, hay or stubble, or precious stones, and the "motives of the heart' are what make it one or the other.
Again, if we were to view successful ministry by the size of our ministry, the number of people we are reaching, we can be open for the enemy to truly lead us astray to a place God could say, "depart from me you worker of iniquity, "you did this for your own need, your own satisfaction not mine."
Does God measure success by the size of our church, the work we are doing in our community, or the "heart that is doing the work and who gets the glory?" If we measure by humans standards anything less than a mega-church or the new "satelite" churches would be the standard, or how many people we are reaching, or how much food we are giving out.
One time God sent me to minister to a Pastor and church in Minneapolis that I saw in a dream for over two months. We went to find it. They had moved from the place God showed me in a dream. So I began to ask where they moved to and someone said outside of the city and gave us a name of a church.
Donna and I went there. It had over 10,000 members. I walked in they Jesus is Lord in neon lights. They had the bookstore, coffee shop, and every single ministry you could imagine. We got there early and the choir was 200 people, and they had an orchestra pit.
As you walked in the door there were huge TV screens running continually with the "church vision." This year we are going to reach 10,000 people, 5000 homes, feed 20,000 people, send 100 missionaries world wide, etc. I think you get the point. Donna and I stood there and not one person said hello to us.
Donna and I said, "this can't be the place you sent us to." So we left and drove over the bridge and got lost and didn't know where to turn so instead of getting on the highway, I pulled over and the Lord said, "turn your head to the left." I did, and there was the church God was sending us to. An old brown church.
They were having a Sunday night gathering, so we asked if we could join. The Pastor said, "this is kind of new for us, we are just going to worship the Lord and be in his presence and kind of let him do what he wants to do." Is that something you want to join." I said, "yes" while they are worshiping the Lord said, "Henry he is checking you out in me, asking me why you are here. I am telling him I have sent you here and he is going to ask you to share why I sent you here, you must do so. Then let them pray over you all after they ask you to pray for them.
Beloved,I have never met this man before, and no Pastor just hands over their pulpit to strangers. Yet, after worship he said, "Brother Henry, during worship I asked God about you, and why you are here. He told me He sent you here and that you have a message to bring. I never, ever do this to someone I don't know, but God sent you here, please bring the word of the Lord. So we did and it was glorious.
Why do I mention this, because the word God gave me for him was " to tell him to keep going in letting go and letting me do what I want in their midst." This is what is pleasing to my heart. God sent me 2000 miles to tell this man of God one message, that his heart for God, his heart just to be for God's heart pleased him.
God did not give me one word to say to the other church, and it was like, he didn't even regard it in comparison to this little church of 7 people attending that night.
Beloved, I know many good men and women of God who started out leaning and listening to God and later to fail, even for their churches to be shut down or given over to a false deception or the spirit of Jezebel. Why? Because what they were doing for God became more important than the God they were doing it for.
Their worth got based on being welcomed by men, seen by men, loved by men and doing much in the reaching of men instead of loving the Lord above all these things.
God is gracious and he will try to "correct us" lovingly as he can to make sure our priority is him and not our work. He will lovingly allow circumstances to come to make sure our worth never gets rooted in "what we do" instead of who we are in Him and who He is in us."
If we allow those loving corrections, he will keep our feet firmly planted in Him, and to grow deeper in deeper in love for Him. Then truly any ministry we do will be the overflow of God where He is seen and we are not. Oswald Chambers says, "that the real work God is doing through us, is when we don't really notice we have done anything at all."
Our flesh loves the recognition and the approval of men, but what we need is the approval of God. "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." What did Jesus do when John the Baptist heard those words? Not one thing in ministry? But even those first 30 years of seemingly nothing accomplished.
Jesus learned obedience by the things he suffered so the Father could say, This is my beloved son, who I am well pleased, listen to him.
My prayer for me and all of us is that our worth never becomes based on what we do. That we hear Jesus say to us today, "Do not rejoice that devils obey you, but rejoice that your name is written in the Lambs Book of Life.
Beloved, whatever God accomplishes through us is His work not ours. We have nothing to do with it. We didn't make it up, we didn't create it in our own power. It is not the work of our "sweat and blood" if it is truly God's work. If it is truly God's work, then He must get all the glory don't you think?
Listen to Paul's words to the Corinthian church:
3 However, brethren, I could not talk to you as to spiritual [men], but as to nonspiritual [men of the flesh, in whom the carnal nature predominates], as to mere infants [in the new life] in Christ [[a]unable to talk yet!]
2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not yet strong enough [to be ready for it]; but even yet you are not strong enough [to be ready for it],
3 For you are still [unspiritual, having the nature] of the flesh [under the control of ordinary impulses]. For as long as [there are] envying and jealousy and wrangling and factions among you, are you not unspiritual and of the flesh, behaving yourselves after a human standard and like mere (unchanged) men?
4 For when one says, I belong to Paul, and another, I belong to Apollos, are you not [proving yourselves] ordinary (unchanged) men?
5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Ministering servants [not heads of parties] through whom you believed, even as the Lord appointed to each his task:
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God [all the while] was making it grow and [He] gave the increase.
7 So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but [only] God Who makes it grow and become greater.
8 He who plants and he who waters are equal (one in aim, of the same importance and esteem), yet each shall receive his own reward (wages), according to his own labor.
9 For we are fellow workmen (joint promoters, laborers together) with and for God; you are God’s [b]garden and vineyard and field under cultivation, [you are] God’s building.
10 According to the grace (the special endowment for my task) of God bestowed on me, like a skillful architect and master builder I laid [the] foundation, and now another [man] is building upon it. But let each [man] be careful how he builds upon it,
11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is [already] laid, which is Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).
12 But if anyone builds upon the Foundation, whether it be with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,
13 The work of each [one] will become [plainly, openly] known (shown for what it is); for the day [of Christ] will disclose and declare it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test and critically appraise the character and worth of the work each person has done.
14 If the work which any person has built on this Foundation [any product of his efforts whatever] survives [this test], he will get his reward.
15 But if any person’s work is burned up [under the test], he will suffer the loss [of it all, losing his reward], though he himself will be saved, but only as [one who has passed] through fire.
Beloved Men and Women of God, is this our testimony:
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God [all the while] was making it grow and [He] gave the increase.
7 So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but [only] God Who makes it grow and become greater.
But God makes it grow! Neither he who plants or waters is anything: ONLY GOD!
That is what David says in Psalm 27: One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I will seek after. May that be the root and heart of all our Christian life and ministry.
The Warning Against Desiring Spiritual Success
04/24/2014
Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you… —Luke 10:20
Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor is it sin. The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age in which we now live.
Never seek after anything other than the approval of God, and always be willing to go “outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Hebrews 13:13).In Luke 10:20, Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us do rejoice.
We have a commercialized view— we count how many souls have been saved and sanctified, we thank God, and then we think everything is all right. Yet our work only begins where God’s grace has laid the foundation. Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them.
Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others’ lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit.
As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God’s testimony to us as His workers. God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others.
Unless the worker lives a life that “is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), he is apt to become an irritating dictator to others, instead of an active, living disciple. Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to groups. But Jesus never dictates to us in that way.
Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an “if,” never with the forceful or dogmatic statement— “You must.” Discipleship carries with it an option.
What a word of instruction to us: I felt the Lord ask me to comment on this so I will below"
God warned me many years ago about what he would call"false ministry idolatry." False ministry idolatry forms in a heart when our "success" is built upon how God uses us and what we are accomplishing instead of "just being His". It forms when we "try" in our hearts" to be successful" in what we "think establishes" our worth by "proving our ministry."
Beloved's, I have seen many ministries rise and fall because of this issue. We can build and do great things for God and God not even be in it.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus said, "many will say in that day, Lord, Lord have we not prophesied in your name, cast out devils in your name..." Jesus said, "depart from me you workers of iniquity, I never knew you."
What could that mean for us as Christian Leaders today? What are the motives of our hearts in our service to God? Who is truly getting the glory for what we are doing, God or us?
Is our life in Christ that started out it's worth by being made by God Himself for His purposes, and our being bought by the blood of the lamb to prove that worth to redeem us, now being replaced by our "successful service" to God.
Depart from me you workers of iniquity means to always make sure with God that you are not "basing your worth" on how "God is using you." "Lord, Lord have we not... done all these things... in your name. Why did they need to boast about it to Him, since if it was from His heart for them to do, why "bring their works to him" as if "they initiated and did the work and not God?"
Is that not the heart of a Babel Religious system that says, Let us make bricks, let us build a city, let us build a tower that can reach into heaven. Let us make a name for ourselves?
Beloved's, God could build us up today and then remove it in a day, would we still love him above all things?
David was sure successful while in attendance to King Saul. He got to marry the Kings' Daughter, have a place at the Kings table, and was as close to where he would become king as he could have been.
Yet, He was being chased as far as he could be from the throne God promised him where he learns the true heart of all "work for God." He learns this hidden in a cave where he writes one of the most beautiful psalms is written:
1 The Lord is my Light and my Salvation—whom shall I fear or dread? The Lord is the Refuge and Stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When the wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.
3 Though a host encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, [even then] in this will I be confident.
4 One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek, inquire for, and [insistently] require: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord [in His presence] all the days of my life, to behold and gaze upon the beauty [the sweet attractiveness and the delightful loveliness] of the Lord and to meditate, consider, and inquire in His temple.
Today, it is popular to base our life "on how many people we are reaching for God." It is popular to base our success on our usefulness to God or even or ministry work." I am sure David had that temptation as well, but here in the cave far away from everything God reduces this man to 'one thing."
Here we see a "man after God's own heart" not after "men's hearts." David realizes why He is made to seek GOD, His heart, and live in His presence and dwell in the beauty of the Lord, or the Secret place of the Most High God.
His worth is not base on being King, it is not worth based on slaying Goliath, or defeating the enemies, that was just the "work God predestined him to do" His rejoicing was in his Lord that made him. His worth was based on the Lord Himself who called him to himself.
Beloved Christian Leader and Worker can we honestly say to God today, "one thing I desire of the Lord, that will I seek after, or does the "working for God" consume us? It would be good every once in a while to lay that work down before God to see if we have built wood, hay or stubble, or precious stones, and the "motives of the heart' are what make it one or the other.
Again, if we were to view successful ministry by the size of our ministry, the number of people we are reaching, we can be open for the enemy to truly lead us astray to a place God could say, "depart from me you worker of iniquity, "you did this for your own need, your own satisfaction not mine."
Does God measure success by the size of our church, the work we are doing in our community, or the "heart that is doing the work and who gets the glory?" If we measure by humans standards anything less than a mega-church or the new "satelite" churches would be the standard, or how many people we are reaching, or how much food we are giving out.
One time God sent me to minister to a Pastor and church in Minneapolis that I saw in a dream for over two months. We went to find it. They had moved from the place God showed me in a dream. So I began to ask where they moved to and someone said outside of the city and gave us a name of a church.
Donna and I went there. It had over 10,000 members. I walked in they Jesus is Lord in neon lights. They had the bookstore, coffee shop, and every single ministry you could imagine. We got there early and the choir was 200 people, and they had an orchestra pit.
As you walked in the door there were huge TV screens running continually with the "church vision." This year we are going to reach 10,000 people, 5000 homes, feed 20,000 people, send 100 missionaries world wide, etc. I think you get the point. Donna and I stood there and not one person said hello to us.
Donna and I said, "this can't be the place you sent us to." So we left and drove over the bridge and got lost and didn't know where to turn so instead of getting on the highway, I pulled over and the Lord said, "turn your head to the left." I did, and there was the church God was sending us to. An old brown church.
They were having a Sunday night gathering, so we asked if we could join. The Pastor said, "this is kind of new for us, we are just going to worship the Lord and be in his presence and kind of let him do what he wants to do." Is that something you want to join." I said, "yes" while they are worshiping the Lord said, "Henry he is checking you out in me, asking me why you are here. I am telling him I have sent you here and he is going to ask you to share why I sent you here, you must do so. Then let them pray over you all after they ask you to pray for them.
Beloved,I have never met this man before, and no Pastor just hands over their pulpit to strangers. Yet, after worship he said, "Brother Henry, during worship I asked God about you, and why you are here. He told me He sent you here and that you have a message to bring. I never, ever do this to someone I don't know, but God sent you here, please bring the word of the Lord. So we did and it was glorious.
Why do I mention this, because the word God gave me for him was " to tell him to keep going in letting go and letting me do what I want in their midst." This is what is pleasing to my heart. God sent me 2000 miles to tell this man of God one message, that his heart for God, his heart just to be for God's heart pleased him.
God did not give me one word to say to the other church, and it was like, he didn't even regard it in comparison to this little church of 7 people attending that night.
Beloved, I know many good men and women of God who started out leaning and listening to God and later to fail, even for their churches to be shut down or given over to a false deception or the spirit of Jezebel. Why? Because what they were doing for God became more important than the God they were doing it for.
Their worth got based on being welcomed by men, seen by men, loved by men and doing much in the reaching of men instead of loving the Lord above all these things.
God is gracious and he will try to "correct us" lovingly as he can to make sure our priority is him and not our work. He will lovingly allow circumstances to come to make sure our worth never gets rooted in "what we do" instead of who we are in Him and who He is in us."
If we allow those loving corrections, he will keep our feet firmly planted in Him, and to grow deeper in deeper in love for Him. Then truly any ministry we do will be the overflow of God where He is seen and we are not. Oswald Chambers says, "that the real work God is doing through us, is when we don't really notice we have done anything at all."
Our flesh loves the recognition and the approval of men, but what we need is the approval of God. "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." What did Jesus do when John the Baptist heard those words? Not one thing in ministry? But even those first 30 years of seemingly nothing accomplished.
Jesus learned obedience by the things he suffered so the Father could say, This is my beloved son, who I am well pleased, listen to him.
My prayer for me and all of us is that our worth never becomes based on what we do. That we hear Jesus say to us today, "Do not rejoice that devils obey you, but rejoice that your name is written in the Lambs Book of Life.
Beloved, whatever God accomplishes through us is His work not ours. We have nothing to do with it. We didn't make it up, we didn't create it in our own power. It is not the work of our "sweat and blood" if it is truly God's work. If it is truly God's work, then He must get all the glory don't you think?
Listen to Paul's words to the Corinthian church:
3 However, brethren, I could not talk to you as to spiritual [men], but as to nonspiritual [men of the flesh, in whom the carnal nature predominates], as to mere infants [in the new life] in Christ [[a]unable to talk yet!]
2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not yet strong enough [to be ready for it]; but even yet you are not strong enough [to be ready for it],
3 For you are still [unspiritual, having the nature] of the flesh [under the control of ordinary impulses]. For as long as [there are] envying and jealousy and wrangling and factions among you, are you not unspiritual and of the flesh, behaving yourselves after a human standard and like mere (unchanged) men?
4 For when one says, I belong to Paul, and another, I belong to Apollos, are you not [proving yourselves] ordinary (unchanged) men?
5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Ministering servants [not heads of parties] through whom you believed, even as the Lord appointed to each his task:
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God [all the while] was making it grow and [He] gave the increase.
7 So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but [only] God Who makes it grow and become greater.
8 He who plants and he who waters are equal (one in aim, of the same importance and esteem), yet each shall receive his own reward (wages), according to his own labor.
9 For we are fellow workmen (joint promoters, laborers together) with and for God; you are God’s [b]garden and vineyard and field under cultivation, [you are] God’s building.
10 According to the grace (the special endowment for my task) of God bestowed on me, like a skillful architect and master builder I laid [the] foundation, and now another [man] is building upon it. But let each [man] be careful how he builds upon it,
11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is [already] laid, which is Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).
12 But if anyone builds upon the Foundation, whether it be with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,
13 The work of each [one] will become [plainly, openly] known (shown for what it is); for the day [of Christ] will disclose and declare it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test and critically appraise the character and worth of the work each person has done.
14 If the work which any person has built on this Foundation [any product of his efforts whatever] survives [this test], he will get his reward.
15 But if any person’s work is burned up [under the test], he will suffer the loss [of it all, losing his reward], though he himself will be saved, but only as [one who has passed] through fire.
Beloved Men and Women of God, is this our testimony:
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God [all the while] was making it grow and [He] gave the increase.
7 So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but [only] God Who makes it grow and become greater.
But God makes it grow! Neither he who plants or waters is anything: ONLY GOD!
That is what David says in Psalm 27: One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I will seek after. May that be the root and heart of all our Christian life and ministry.
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