I can never
say too much about our walk with God.
Ezekiel chapter 37 not only talks about the dry bones (dead church) but
gives insight as to what Father is planning on and is already (to some degree)
doing.
After
showing Ezekiel the valley of dry bones, God goes on to tell Ezekiel 37:12-14:
Therefore prophesy and tell them ‘Thus says the Lord, behold,
My people I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves
and bring you into the land of Israel.
And you know that I AM the Lord when I have opened your
graves, O My people, and brought you up out of your graves.
And (I) shall put My Spirit in you and you shall live and I
shall place you in your own land, then you shall now that I, the Lord, have
spoken it and performed it. Thus says
the Lord.”
Even though
God is speaking to Ezekiel about Israel, this passage also applies to today’s
church. In the passage, God is promising
Israel that it shall be free of bondage and shall return home (Israel, the
country). Today, He is promising today’s
church, not a land which it was once
promised but to a realm the church once knew and that it shall (will) free from
the bondage of doubt and denial and return to that which the early apostles and
disciples experienced in the church, the power of Almighty God being expressed
to and through His people.
To
understand, a little better, what Peter, John, Paul and the rest of the early
disciples experienced we have to let the Holy Ghost lead us through the book of Acts, and all the letters, epistles that Paul and other apostles wrote.
Of course,
Acts relates how those men established the early church, over 2000 years ago by
being obedient to the Holy Ghost and allowing God to demonstrate His power
through them. They were not only obedient to His word but to His will. Also as they established leadership in those
churches, the apostles confirmed those leaders in God’s doctrine of love.
The letters
deal with the problems the early church struggled with in trying to adhere to
God’s doctrine of love and how the apostles dealt with those issues reaffirming
how we (today) should also
be.
For over a
millennia (1000 years) the church continued to struggle with those issues.
However, as the teaching and influence of the apostles faded into history, the
church eventually started to drift away from those original doctrines. As time passed and after the persecution was
basically over, the church started becoming comfortable with ‘just’ assembling (Heb. 10:25) and living by what the
scriptures said and soon forgetting what they meant, the heart of God’s Word. Today’s church is dangerously stepping around
and in what God told Jeremiah about Israel:
The enemy is at your gates and will surround you and my
judgement will come touching against all their (Israelites) wickedness, those
who have forsaken Me, burned incense to other gods and worshipped the works of
their own hands (Jeremiah 1:15-16).
In another scripture we see where Father gives people over to
their own devices (Romans 1:28).
As I said,
the church has drifted away from God, doing its own thing and interpreting
scripture as ‘man’ sees fit and not necessarily as directed by the Holy
Ghost. The more it Leaned on man’s
understanding (not God’s), Father has let the church go its own way. Now, understand, where Jesus is lifted up as
the Son of God, that God come into this world in the flesh (in the person of
Jesus) (John 1:1-14), through Jesus ministered
to us (Matt. 4:23), died on the
cross for our sins (1 Peter 2:24),
rose from the dead (1 Corinth. 15:3-8)
and is seated at the right hand of the Father (Acts 7:55-56) as He waits to come back for us (1 Thess. 4:13-18), the churches which believe these things are in
God’s hands (Romans 8:38-39). But, as a whole, it (the church) has still
drifted.
That is until
God started to reawaken His children in the 1300 & 1400’s. God’s servants were creating a bible to give the
common man so he wouldn’t have to rely just on what clergy said, but actually could
read it for himself (Acts 17:10-11).
For six
centuries God has carried us through a growing process from those first common
language bibles through the Protestant Reformation, the Holiness Movement, the
Pentecostal Movement, leading us up to today where He is now again speaking to
His church, His children. If one counts
centuries, we are in the seventh century since those early bibles were
presented, or if you will, the seventh ‘season’ from that time.
If you look
at Christianity’s meaning of numbers (I use Biblenumbersforlife.com), seven is the Father’s perfection,
resurrection or spiritual completeness.
Think about it. We are in the
seventh season since Father started rousing His church out of its slumber. We are in a season of many things starting to
happen. Father is bringing His church to
spiritual completeness (maturity) because He has resurrected us. As in Ezekiel, He is bringing us up out of
our graves, resurrecting us, so we can accomplish His will in this world. Again, if you will, He is re-awakening an apostolic
age, not to the establish the church all over again (it already has been
established), but to work as in the epistles and bring it back to the power He
shared with the early church. – and not just in concept but in fact and reality.
The early church believed, with all their
heart, they were living in the last days as they awaited Jesus’ return. And so they were. But, so are we, but many more things are
true, events taking place and all the things happening today that weren’t all
true then, nor been true through the ages.
The earth,
all creation, is travailing (Romans
8:19-23) awaiting Jesus’ return. In
the gospel of Matthew, Jesus gives us a glimpse of what to expect before He
comes back for His bride:
false claims to Messiahship, wars, rumors of wars, nation
fighting against nation, famines, plagues and earthquakes (in weird
places). There will again be persecution
and there will be betrayal, hatred and false prophets and the love of many shall
turn cold (Matt. 24:3-13).
Paul writes
to the Thessalonians in 2 Thessalonians
1:3,
“I beg you brothers, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
and by our gathering together unto Him,
Don’t be soon shaken in mind or troubled neither by spirit,
nor word nor letter as (which seems to come) from us as that day of Christ is
at hand (approaching).
Don’t let any man deceive you by any means (pertaining to
this), because (this won’t happen) until there is first a falling away (the
church) and the man of sin be revealed, (that is) the son of perdition.
We’ve had
the falling away, from shortly after the early church until something over
six hundred years ago.
In January 2015 Doug Addison (a prophet of God
in California) prophesied God was bringing seven years of blessings and
restitution for God’s people which began at that time.
During these
seven years, Father is bringing His children up out of their graves and we will
(and are even now) coming to know that He is Lord. And, as we realize and acknowledge that He is
working a work in our hearts, we will come to truly glorify Him (1 Corinth. 10:31) as the only true and
living God who has created the heavens and the earth and all that is therein (Psalms 146:5-6). We will not only come to understand His love
but we shall walk in His love (John
15:10). We will come to realize that
we can do nothing without Him (Jesus) (John 15:5) but we can do all things in
(through) Him (Phil. 4:13). The church shall revive and we shall see
functions and operations just as the apostles did in the early church. Not because a handful of disciples are doing
them, but because a massive army of Christians is trusting Father and allowing
the Holy Ghost to not only work ’in’ us, but ‘through’ us as well. Don’t quench the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19) but rather yield to Him (Gal. 5:25) so we can lead full, productive lives in serving Jesus
Christ, our Lord and Savior.
Make no
mistake, as I share these things, don’t assume that I have attained the
pinnacle of which we are speaking (far from it). But, Father is showing me these things to
encourage me on and so I pass it on to you.
Our walk with God is a continually growing experience as we yield
different parts of our lives over to Him. It is a lifelong growth process.
There is a
ladder with a hundred rungs. When we
first give our hearts to Jesus we are stepping onto the first rung
(obviously). The pinnacle is when we have
our back foot on rung 100 getting ready to push off of it and what will be into
eternity with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, living in the literal presence
of God, our Father. The 98 rungs in
between are our growth, yielding to Him, learning to live in his love, maturing
in His Holy Spirit. We can climb that
ladder as quickly as we dare or take as long as we need (God knows). We can be stuck on the lower rungs of the
ladder or anxiously anticipating and reach for to that final step from the
higher rungs. We should run the race as
if we expect to win (1 Corinth. 9:24). Winning is knowing that Father would that we
all would be at the top rungs awaiting His call so we can be with Him in the
clouds, meeting Him in the air (1
Thessalonians 4:16-17), expecting to enter eternity with Him.
But
understand, God can use us at any level.
He knows our hearts, He knows what we are capable of and He will use us
to accomplish His will when He deems us ready (Jeremiah 17:10).
All we have
to do is be available, like Simon the Cyrenian (Luke 23:26), be willing like Samuel (1 Sam. 3:10) and to be obedient (Jeremiah 7:23).
Of course,
Simon carried Jesus’ cross to Calvary (Golgotha).
Samuel
learned to hear God’s voice, then offer himself into service.
Jeremiah encourages
us to be obedient to God’s word.
Question is
“Are we willing to walk with God?”
No comments:
Post a Comment