Spiritual Maturity Through the Valleys

I decided to share this little poem which I found in the devotional “Springs in the Valley” because back in the days, when I was losing everything that I possessed, Jeremiah 29:11 was one of my favorite verses.

 “'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”

My understanding of the verse was so far from God’s intention. I could not even imagine that the calamity that my life had become was God’s plan for my welfare, to give me a future and a hope.

I also like the fact that, even though the writer has long passed away and was born in the 1800 era, God’s way has never changed. More than a century down the road, her life experience was about dark days, surrender and abiding life. Because this has been my path for so many years now, the poem is encouraging for the reason that, sometimes it is not easy to follow after God. Through my journey with Him, I learned that those verses of the Bible are not there to make my life easier and more comfortable. As I let Him do His work in me, He is able to get rid of my corrupted view and understanding.

At the end of the day, even though it is a hard life that God has put me on, I will cherish it and rejoice in the pain the sufferings and all the lost that I have incurred. Through the hardships and His teaching, I learned the difference between mature Christians vis a vis God and mature Christians vis a vis man. Spiritual maturity is acquired through learning to persevere when the shadows in the deep valleys never end. It is acquired when you truly learn from Him how to live this life with Him alone as your hope and there is nothing else left to hang on to, except the hope of this life in Him. It is also acquired, when we learn to abide there, at His feet, in a life of surrender and oneness. As He infuses your soul with His character, you cannot help but rejoice in the suffering because your soul can see the beauty that is being produced in you. A mature Christian is one that is established, strengthened and settled and it is forged mainly from the valleys of this journey.  

Poem From: -Freda Hanbury Alle
"The love of God a perfect planIs planning now for thee,It holds a "future and a hope,"Which yet thou canst not see. Though for a season, in the dark,He asks thy perfect trust,E'en that thou in surrender "layThy treasure in the dust," Yet He is planning all the while,Unerringly He guidesThe life of him, who holds His willMore dear than all besides. Trust were not trust if thou couldst seeThe ending of the way,Nor couldst thou learn His songs by night,Were life one radiant day. Amid the shadows here He worksThe plan designed above,"A future and a hope" for theeIn His exceeding love. "A future"-- abiding fruit,With loving kindness crowned;"A hope"-- which shall thine own transcend,As Heaven the earth around. Though veiled as yet, one day thine eyesShall see His plan unfold,And clouds that darkened once the pathShall shine with Heaven's gold. Enriched to all eternityThe steadfast soul shall stand,That, "unoffended", trusted HimWho all life's pathway planned. I have an heritage of bliss,Which yet I may not see;The Hand that bled to make it mine,Is keeping it for me." -Freda Hanbury Alle

Spiritual Fruit - Part 3 Last One

Preached at North Street Chapel, Stamford, on September 2, 1858, by Philpot

"From Me is your fruit found." Hosea 14:8

What is this fruit then? It is faith, hope, love, godly fear, submission to God's will, tenderness of conscience, love and esteem for the brethren, self-denial, putting off the old man, putting on the new—and I might stand here until midnight and then not exhaust the catalogue. These are set forth by the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians, where he says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance—against such there is no law." Here are all the fruits of the Spirit penned down by the Holy Spirit himself; but you may examine it for yourselves, and indeed compare what is in your soul with it; then you will confess how short you come of bearing that fruit—the bearing of which stamps the Christian indeed—but we shall never bear fruit to God, until we are brought to see that our fruit comes from God.

III. How this fruit is from the Lord—"from me is your fruit found." How positively and clearly is this set forth in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of John's Gospel, where the Lord says, "Without me you can do nothing." "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abides in the vine, no more can you except you abide in me." So you see that union with Christ is indispensable to the bringing forth of fruit; for as the sap flows out of the stem, so it is with the believing soul and Jesus—only so far as Christ flows into his soul is he able to bring forth fruit unto God. "Abide in me and I in you; as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abides in the vine, no more can you except you abide in me." Then there is a being in Christ by vital union, and an abiding in him by faith, prayer, hope, and love, and a receiving grace for grace out of his fullness—so that from him is our fruit.

Now, as we begin to feel day by day our barrenness, and as our wrinkles arise in our face, we begin to see that from Jesus only is our fruit. Let us then raise our souls up out of our miserable selves, and fix our eyes upon him at the right hand of God and beg of him to communicate his grace to our souls, and send down the influence of his Spirit that will bring forth fruit in us—which is peace, praise, and honor to God. No one can bring forth fruit without a conflict with self—self checks the crop like the ivy clinging to and strangling the vine.

I have a grape-vine in the front of my house, and almost the first thing I noticed when I returned home yesterday was that every leaf was struck with mildew—in fact the whole tree has been struck, as it were, with the same withering disease. What an emblem of a poor, withered professor! There will never be a cluster either fit to be made into wine or eaten as dessert. Now, when we see what we are in ourselves we see nothing but mildew. As the grape-vine seems to have more enemies than any other fruit, because, as it is said, it cheers the heart of God and man, and we are represented in Scripture as branches of the vine, therefore we need the grace of God in order that we may overcome these enemies. Though I have not sufficient skill to cure the mildew on my vine—yet the Lord has skill to cure the mildew in our souls, for his grace can and does and will sanctify the sinner's heart.

Therefore whatever despair I might feel about having any fruit from the vine on my trellis, there shall be no mildew upon the trellis of your soul, for he can send a shower to wash off the mildew, and put forth his hand to knock off the insects that feed upon the fruit of the vine. The Lord says, "From me is your fruit found." The fruit flows forth—the spirit of thankfulness, of brokenness, and godly sorrow for sin. And yet there will be times and seasons when we sink very low, and when we feel or fear that there never was a spark of grace in our heart. But your very feeling of your unfruitfulness, is in itself a fruit. Your mourning over your unfruitfulness and your being cast down into dejection—these very things are spiritual fruit, for they are produced by the same Holy Spirit that brings forth the blossoms of faith, hope, and love.

III. There is the FINDING of this fruit. In a vine some of the richest clusters are found under the leaves. Leaf and fruit go very much together, for where there is a leaf full of mildew, you find nothing but a cluster of rotten fruit. Well, so in grace—if there be little fruit there will be a withered profession, because the 'leaf' represents the 'profession'. The world can see what you profess, and they will see the mildew spots upon it. "O," they say, "that man talks about religion—but he is just like us. You who have to deal with him know how he deals, how he can laugh and giggle like other men, and how angry he is if anything crosses him. It is only a profession—he goes to chapel, but we all know what he is."

Here is a profession with the mildew upon it. "See," they may say, "that man was drunk last night—yet he goes to church on Sundays." If the 'leaf' is so bad, what must the 'berry' be? If the man's profession is such, what must be the man himself? So if the mildew has struck the leaf you may be sure the mildew has reached the clusters.

We find that the best clusters sometimes grow on the lowest bough; so it is in grace—the humbler a man is the more fruit he will bring forth. The same sap that feeds the branch nearest the stem feeds the branch farthest off. "From me is your fruit found." Your soul may be often cast down, and you may say, "Was there ever any sinner like me?" but your complaints do not take you into the world again—you are not telling lies or joking and gossiping with your neighbors—but you are mourning and groaning that you are not bringing forth fruit unto God.

Now, the Lord may speak these words to encourage his saints—"Come out of the world. From me is your fruit found. Not from the world. Do not be carried away with the things of time and sense. Not from worldly-mindedness, not from family distress is fruit produced—but from me, out of my fullness by the communications of my grace."

If you don't get it from that source you will get it nowhere, and every branch that does not bear fruit, he hews down. So that we come to one of two things—you must either be a branch that bears fruit from Christ—from the communications of Christ's love to your soul—or else one that bears not fruit, which the Father takes away. There is no intermediate state whereby we have part from ourselves and part from Christ, for "from me," says the Lord, "is your fruit found."

Spiritual Fruit - Part 2

Preached at North Street Chapel, Stamford, on September 2, 1858, by Philpot

Pay special attention to the last paragraph. For years I went on with my christian walk thinking Romans 7:2-3 had something to do with my marital status. That is until, He got hold of my spiritual ignorance and corrected my thinking. There is so much depth to these verses that I found it mind blowing. I also felt in love with the depth of Paul's life with God because he could not have written this so poetically by himself. 


"From Me is your fruit found." Hosea 14:8


But I believe there is a desire in every soul under divine teaching, to bring forth fruit, to come out of the world and the things that are of the world, to walk in God's fear, and to have some testimonies that he is accepted, that he is a saved soul, and that he has a saving interest in the atoning blood of the Son of God. And all through a Christian's life wherever the Spirit moves, wherever the Spirit operates upon that man's heart and conscience, there will be a desire to bring forth fruit; and this is a mark and test of being one of God's family. A profession does not put us into Christ—mere head knowledge does not put us into Christ—talking and chattering do not put us into Christ—none of the works of man give us a birth and being in Christ, and a title to receive out of the fullness of Christ. Therefore, from first to last, beginning, middle, and end it is all of sovereign grace, of the work and workmanship of the Holy Spirit in the heart and conscience.

If a soul is living under the operation of the Holy Spirit, under this communication and influence, there is a breaking out and a breathing after bringing forth fruit. How that godly man Habakkuk stood upon the watchtower and his soul was grieved within him because there were those that stirred up strife and grievances. How he grieved and groaned not only because the Lord did not hear his prayer, but because he himself did not bring forth fruit. When we see that leanness, that being content to drag on a life without any communion, real faith, hope, or love—we may be sure that the love of God is not there. The people of God may sink very low, but there are those breathings after God that make them live to his praise and honor.

Now, when they begin to long to bring forth fruit they begin to see what fruit is, for none can see what fruit is but the saints of God. All men do not know what fruit is, and until a man knows what it is he cannot bring it forth. For instance, here is a man who does not go to the races, nor to balls or parties—but goes to church and pays his debts. O what a good man he thinks he is; he says his prayers at night, and makes sure of going to heaven. The man is blind as a gnat, dead as a door nail, and his heart is hard as adamant. He does not know what real Christianity is. He gives food to the poor at Christmas, subscribes to charities and missions, and thinks what wonderful things he is doing. The man has not his eyes open to see what true Christianity is and what real Christian fruit is.

When a child of God begins to see what fruit is and that it must be spiritual—the first thing he sees is that "natural fruit" is not accepted by God. If I gave an order for a basket of fruit because I was expecting a friend to dine with me, and the grocer sent me a basket of weeds, crab-apples, or rotten oranges, I would think he was insulting me. And so if a man has not sufficient knowledge to distinguish between all the rottenness of 'human production' and good fruit, he will find that the Lord is not a God to be mocked, but that the only fruit which is acceptable in his sight must be spiritually produced by union and communion with Jesus Christ.

And I wish that you who profess religion, and who may have it to some extent, would pray for a clearer view of what fruit is, for then, instead of being puffed up with pride, you would see that there was little else in you but thorns and briars.

Now, this is what the soul must know—that all fruit is produced by union and communion with Christ. You will find that subject opened up in the seventh chapter of Romans, where we read of being 'married to Christ'. So if a man is not married to Christ and does some good things, humanly speaking, they are only 'bastard fruit'. All fruit that is not produced by marriage to Christ is not legitimate fruit. As in nature where children are born out of wedlock, they are the offspring of adultery, and as such will bear the stamp of their parents, and cannot take part in the inheritance of the father; so a person may bring forth fruit, but if that fruit is not legitimate, God will stamp it with bastardy, and will not allow it to take part in the inheritance of his family. And, therefore, fruit is not of our works. The gift of a few dollars, or a few times going to chapel or church will not produce it; it is deeper than this.

Transformed by Beholding

It is important to remember, God always wants us to join Him in what He is doing in our lives; since the beginning of time when He created Adam & Eve and throughout the whole Bible. While He taught me how important our participation is to Him, He did not tell me why. In my opinion, some of the reasons He wants our participation is so our free will is not violated. He wants our participation because it forces us to be more aware of Him. When we participate we can see His majestic power at work. We learn to appreciate Him, love Him and revere Him much more because of the magnitude of seeing His grace at work in our lives.  It is also a way to personally relate to us and He also finds pleasure in us when we voluntarily participate. An example of that would be Adam & Eve choosing not to listen to the serpent simply because God had already given His directives.

In the same way, God wants us to be transformed all the way, to the point where we behold Him. This beholding work really depends on us a lot. Let me explain. Try to picture the process of taking a picture. The process resembles to the lengthy work that used to happen in the old days with the old camera when we had to wait weeks to finally see the picture fully come to life. (Go to the internet and read about the lengthy process of the old days) Remember this is the same God who took the Israelites in the wilderness by the long road, instead of taking the path that would take them a few days.

Beholding Him is about becoming like Him. Like I kept saying in my book apprehended & Apprehending, the awareness of beholding Him makes you understand that His goal is for us to become “little Christ.” While the work will only be completed when we die, and it starts right when we have truly received Salvation in our heart through our first encounter with Him but, there is so much to do to in order to get us there.

At the end of the day, beholding Him is acquired through learning to sit and rest at His feet. When the Holy Spirit first taught me that, I did not understand, and I really thought I had to be literally at His feet all the time. So, to some extend I found it almost an impossible job for me to stop all movement, and learn to rest long enough at His feet so His face, His mannerism, His thought process, His  characters and so on could become mine. Strangely He did not correct my defective understanding. But, not only I tried to stay as close as possible to Him in prayers, Bible and meditation, I learned to be more aware of Him during the day.

A few months down the road, He did something wonderful for me. The Holy Spirit sort of took me backward step by step, to see how I have been sitting at His feet all day long. Through this encounter, I understood that sitting at His feet, did not mean literally my external body sitting. But, in Spirit I could see all the time I was living my busy and painful life down here, while I was going on about my business all day long in this realm, in Spirit, I was living quietly and restfully at His feet. Through the process, He showed me how much more I have grown. It is an amazing thing to see how much work God is doing in us in the background to prepare us for the life awaiting us in Heaven.

If you notice, Oswald mentioned things like

1) Unveiled openness before God

2) The Spirit fills us,

3) Beware

4) Concentrate (on keeping open lives)

5) Maintain the position

6) Keeping our live completely spiritual

7) Let others criticize

8) Abiding etc.

You can read it for yourself and find more. But, each one of these things he mentioned could be expand to become a blog post, some could be expand to become books. This is a life being spent in abiding in Him where you live inside of Him in complete rest and holiness. This is a life where you are living with a spiritually minded mind while you cultivate Christ’s mind. This is a life of complete surrender (not halfway or case by case) it is a life where other people cannot touch you with their criticism because you have learned to make it about Him and live with eternal values in sight. All those words above demand that we participate with full intend to reach the heart of the Father. They demand our full attention, and full commitment to Him. While all these things can be done through the abiding process, Oswald mentioned them for a reason, because each requires some sort of growth process in Him and some take years to acquire.

At the end of the day, a life of beholding Him can be acquired though good old “living a full surrendered life”. Our full surrender does not have to be perfect nor do we need a full understanding of what it is, but to some extend we need to know that we are surrendering to God’s way so, anything is possible. We need to know from the moment we surrender to Him, it is no longer about what we want. We can do it through a hearty and real commitment to Him. Then, as God takes us deeper into the surrendering process we realize the first surrender although it was deep to us, it resembled to Abraham when he left his country, left his comfort zone and all that he knew was left behind, to go to a place he had no idea of what to expect and what was going to happen to him. He went, just because God said so. But Abraham was nowhere near being the man he became later on in life.

Transformed By Insight

01 23,2013

We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image. — 2 Corinthians 3:18

The outstanding characteristic of a Christian is this unveiled frankness before God so that the life becomes a mirror for other lives. By being filled with the Spirit we are transformed, and by beholding we become mirrors. You always know when a man has been beholding the glory of the Lord, you feel in your inner spirit that he is the mirror of the Lord’s own character. Beware of anything which would sully that mirror in you; it is nearly always a good thing, the good that is not the best.
The golden rule for your life and mine is this concentrated keeping of the life open towards God. Let everything else – work, clothes, food, everything on earth – go by the board, saving that one thing. The rush of other things always tends to obscure this concentration on God. We have to maintain ourselves in the place of beholding, keeping the life absolutely spiritual all through. Let other things come and go as they may, let other people criticize as they will, but never allow anything to obscure the life that is hid with Christ in God. Never be hurried out of the relationship of abiding in Him. It is the one thing that is apt to fluctuate but it ought not to. The severest discipline of a Christian’s life is to learn how to keep "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord."

Courtesy of: www.utmost.org

Choosing an Obedient Lifestyle!

Intouch magazine in by Pastor Charles Stanley September 2, 2008

“Choosing an Obedient Lifestyle
Romans 6:16-18

Though God is sovereign and omnipotent, many believers don’t trust Him to guide them. Instead they think about obedience on a case-by-case basis, evaluating how the consequences of various choices might affect their life. But the Lord desires followers whose lifestyle is submissive—in other words, people who've made a deliberate decision to surrender to His will in every circumstance.

When confronted with the idea of absolute submission, many of us are assaulted by anxious thoughts: What if the Lord wants me to do something I can’t? Or, What if I don’t want to do what He asks? We fear we wouldn't have the strength, wisdom, or faith to carry out commands He might give. And we’d be right—if we relied upon our own resources. But if we commit to obedience, God equips us at the right moment to follow where He leads.”

If you noticed on a few occasions in my blog I said to you guys “there is a different Christian life other than the one most of us are accustomed to” The truth is even though I know it is true, but whenever I said those words I always felt uncomfortable because I was always afraid that some Christians would think that I am referring to a different Gospel. My problem was that I could never find the right words to describe what I am living in the Spirit and the life that I come to know as my regular daily life with Him.

I started reading the Bible from Genesis 1 yesterday January 3. As I made it to chapter 3:6, it dawned on me, all of the sudden there was a burst of light and I said out loud, “I got it” “this is what I have been trying to explain”. I realized all the time that I have been saying to you there is a different kind of Christianity in union with Him, the difference really lies in the life of Adam & Eve before their eyes opened and they acquired their own wisdom after their eyes opened. In Genesis 3:6 “the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it”. The only word that did it for me so vividly that I could grasp it with my spiritual eyes is the word “wisdom” even as I am writing this, I am hoping God would give my readers the spiritual understanding to see what I also saw.

Now I know it is more than living a life in the Spirit, even though living in His divine life is so awesome and so out of this world, so pure and so restful that man has not created a word that could describe this life fully. The ingredient that makes the Christian life we live through the eyes of God and through our own understanding, so different, is the absence of the worldly wisdom that was acquired by Adam and Eve after they disobeyed. The whole difference I have been trying to share with you in just in that sentence and it is so powerful to my soul.

It is powerful because this wisdom Eve was seeking after has brought us sin, blindness, spiritual death, limitations, barriers and heaviness of the life in the flesh, the bondage, the filth in our souls, the miseries etc. Imagine being able to let go of it?

It is funny though that I have a whole chapter in my book “Apprehended & Apprehending” dedicated to how the life we have in Christ, as we live in oneness with Him, feels as if He is feeding us His life like a mother feeding the growing baby in her womb. The baby is us, taking all that we need as we are fed spiritually by Him. I also shared how essential it is to keep growing in this manner with Him. Yet, I did not realize the discovery of this “different kind of Christianity” that I have been sharing with you is simply the continuity and the growth that I am experiencing with Him as I am being fed by Him.

On a side note the feeding tube is His divine life we acquire only as we live in oneness with Him. It is the abiding life. If you could only see the beauty of being connected to Him, then you would fully understand what we are told in Romans 8:39 “neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It was only then God allowed me to claim this promise for myself.

Beloved, I still have such a long way to go. I am not sharing this with you to show off or make you feel bad. I answer only to God, and if this was my aim, then He would deal with me accordingly. But, understand that my blog is not to condemn, or censure you, and even though my words can be so bold sometimes and I have no shame of telling you bluntly what I see with the gifts of discernment and wisdom given to me by God. Believe it or not, my heart is full of love and I am hoping that God could touch few of you to teach you to live a better life in Him.

There are three paths for us Christians and we have covered them all in the Church with Christians in the pews and in the pulpits. There is a group that fall in the category pastor Charles Stanley referred to as having obedience on a case by case basis. If you belong to that group then you are waking once in a while in the Spirit and that is not good enough to live the abiding life and your growth is slow and limited. There is a small group living deliberately the surrendered life. The third path is for those sitting in the pews and in the pulpits thinking they have truly made a decision for Christ, when in reality they never believe but they are not wiser. Unfortunately, this group is really big, much bigger than the other two combined, hence, my ministry.

Right here on earth, we are expected to live the Christian life having acquired eternal life, and the Kingdom of God within. If we do not have them here on earth, then they are not ours for the taking when we die, it would be too late. The diluted Gospel tells us that we are going to be missing out on some crowns, yes that is true. But, that is only part of it. Before worrying about missing out on a crown or two wouldn't you like to know that you have the very basic? It is like fantasizing about a fancy wedding ball that you are going to, yet you have never managed to secure the tickets you need for admission. Furthermore, you have never been fitted by the groom, with the proper attire. For some of you missing out on a few crowns is the last of your problem. You need to re-prioritize!

I read a long time ago that Andrew Murray was crossing the streets, before he got to the other side, he stood there in the middle of the street quietly for a moment. Someone when he reached the other side, a man asked him why he stopped in the middle of the street. He replied young man I lost contact with the Holy Spirit for a moment and I had to regain it before he continues crossing the street. I wish I could say I am there. Often, I am aware that I lose contact with Him, but I wait a few hours and even a day or two before I go back and reattached myself to Him. I am indeed work in progress.

Quote from Andrew Murray

“The purpose of redemption is Possession, and the purpose of Possession is likeness to Him who is Redeemer and Owner, is Holiness.

The link between Redemption and Holiness is Obedience.

The life of Christ is the holiness of Christ. The reason we so often fail in the pursuit of holiness is that the old life, the flesh, in its own strength seeks for holiness as a beautiful garment to wear and enter heaven with. It is the daily death to self out of which the life of Christ rises up.”
Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ.