Closing The Gap
Writer Author Jerry Lee Kay Sr.
Christian Article
:
Exhortation
- Fiction No
I am not a writer, but I have been known to write. I am not a preacher, but I have been known to preach. I am not a teacher, but I have been known to teach. Me-thinks that I am one that simply has a burden for the church of the living God, nothing more nothing less, those that are being made up to become the "Bride of Christ". Dearly Beloved I have caught sight of that Bride. I can see Her and all Her glory. I once was young and now I am old and I am somewhere between the young men that have visions and the old men that have dreams.
I have visions of the beauty of that Bride and I rejoice in the Lord my God, for He has given me the former rain moderately and is now blessing me with the latter rain. My floors are full of wheat and my vats are overflowing with new wine, the oil of the anointing of His Holy Spirit. OH, dear friends! It is as though the latter rain is better than the former, for even as I sleep, I dream of the goodness of my Beloved. He is the chiefest among ten thousand, His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of living waters. His mouth is most sweet as He whispers words of comfort and love. Yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved and I am His betrothed. My! My! My! How I love the dreams the Holy Spirit brings to me in the hours of the night, the visions of He that paid the price that we may be among the Redeemed.
Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. "Let all breath praise him": that is to say, all living beings. He gave them breath, let them breathe his praise. His name is in the Hebrew composed rather of breathings than of letters, to show that all breath comes from Him: therefore let it be used for Him. Join all ye living things in the eternal song. Be ye least or greatest, withhold not your praises. What a day will it be when all things in all places unite to glorify the one only living and true God! This will be the final triumph of the church of God.
Praise ye the Lord. Once more, Hallelujah! Reader, wilt not thou at this moment pause a while, and worship the Lord thy God? Hallelujah
We are in times when Christian truth, teaching, and knowledge is immense; But the corresponding reality in life is by no means the same. There is a margin, a gap, between what is known, preached and taught, and what is lived. I want to get into that gap as the Lord enables me, and close it up... Or let Him close it up... That, these truths and our life come close together, and become one.
"But now put ye away all these: Anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your mouth: lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him That created him: where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman: but Christ is All, and in all" (Colossians 3:8-11; NASB).
May I say, dear friends, as I approach the message that is in these words, my vision is that we touch reality, that we go beyond theory, beyond teaching as such, and meet the Lord at the point of deep reality, where His need in us is really met and our need in Him is met.
Can you see it? He speaks of the Creator and then the created, "being renewed... After the Image of Him that created him." notice this touch upon the beginning of everything in the Creator and the created, "The image of Him that created..." and the renewal of that image.
And then the real nature and effect of the crisis in the life of Christians. Something has happened in the life of Christians, which marks the beginning of a process, a process indicated by these words, "being renewed," made anew, made over again. The crisis in the life of the believer when something happened: "ye put off... And ye put on." That's the nature and meaning and the effect of the great crisis in the life of the Christian.
Paul dealt with the negatives before the positives. Many folk in our churches will not appreciate that approach. They do not like negatives and want the message to only be positive. But unless there are the negatives, there will not be a place for the positives. In these two verses, Paul says, "put off" some evils. Once they are "put off" then you can "put on" You must remove before you can replace.
Also the occupation and energy of the Holy Spirit Who is doing this renewing work, "being renewed." Well, we are not doing it, either for ourselves or for other people, and other people are not doing it for us. This is the occupation and the energy of the Creator's Spirit. He, Who brooded over the chaos and brought out of the chaos the Divine Order, is the same Spirit now occupied with His own energy in making anew, according to the image, renewing; the activity of the Holy Spirit.
And another, the exclusiveness and the inclusiveness of Christ. That is the last statement, "where there cannot be." That's the right kind of exclusiveness, or exclusives. A whole realm and system and order and nature is excluded: "There cannot be...." But, the inclusiveness is just Christ, "Christ is All, and in All." That's the analysis of these verses, very simple and to the point, but how very comprehensive and how very important and meaningful.
Firstly, then, man and His Creator. The Creator and the created. Maybe it would be as well if we arranged several other passages alongside of this one, going back to the beginning of this same letter in chapter one and verse sixteen: "For in Him were all things, all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist... That in all things He might have the pre eminence... through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself." The center and circumference of all things is Christ, the Creator of all things.
Then, familiar words in John's Gospel, in chapter one and verse three: "All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that hath been made."
John and Paul are one in perfect agreement on this matter of Who was the Originator of all things.
Then to the Letter to the Romans, Chapter eleven and verse thirty-six: "For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things."
And one more in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter eight and verse six: "...There is One God, the Father, of Whom are all things, and we unto Him; and One Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom are all things, and we through Him." That should establish this: what I have called the throwback to the Creator and the created.
Then, in order to come to these words about renewing, or making anew, or starting again, a process of recovery, we have to contemplate that terrible disintegration of the man to whom these scriptures are referring. Yes, the disruption of human life, the disruption of every member of the human race. We need not argue, I think, from Scripture on this, because the argument is finished immediately when we consider ourselves, and mankind as we know mankind.
We are perhaps more aware today than ever of this disruption, this disintegration in human life, that there is a fundamental schism in man, and in mankind. And schism, wherever it is found, always means frustration. Frustration is the evidence of a schism, a divisiveness in human life and in human nature. And we see this of course right from the beginning of history as recorded in the Bible. All the way through, and coming out in our time in a consummate way, there is frustration in human life.... Continuous frustration.
Every new step which is thought to be a step of progress, of advancement, of development, brings with it its own frustrations. No matter how far advanced, how fully developed, how phenomenal the enlargement of knowledge and of ability to do and to achieve; no matter how great, how large, how amazing, the frustration goes with it in the same measure until we reach the point in the world's development which we have reached in our own time when discovery, when invention, when the mastery of forces in this universe and bringing them into the service of man, are terrible and completely amazing. We would never never have believed it only a few years ago. There, right alongside of it is its own undoing and those who know most, are most terrified of what they have put their hands upon. The fearful possibilities and potentialities which they wish they'd never discovered, never known. Frustration runs hand in hand through history with every fresh development and movement. It is there in human life, it is in the creation, and it is in the universe as it now is. And God Himself has taken pains to bring this out for man's realization.
For instance, the Law as we have it in the Old Testament, as we have it vested in the nation, chosen for this very purpose to be God's object lesson to all the nations, to all the world. The Law! The Apostle Paul puts his finger upon that whole system with its long history, its meticulous application, and he says, "The Law was given in order to show how impotent man is." If ever there was a thing employed by Almighty God to demonstrate and expose the weakness of man, it was the Law. That's the Law of Moses, as it is called, the Law of God.
The Apostlem this same apostle who has made such a terrible declaration as to the effect of the Law,that it has only brought to light man's weakness, impotence, helplessness. It hasn't done anything to save man, but rather to condemn him.
That man writes a chapter, a whole chapter in these terms: "The good that I would do, and I would do it with all my heart, I do not. And the evil that I would not, with all my heart would not, I struggle and I strive and I labor and I groan not to do these things, the evil that I would not, that I do. Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me? How did ever I know that the thing that was right that it should be done? How ever did I discover that the thing was wrong that I should not do it? The Law made me know right and wrong and left me paralyzed, utterly incapable of rising to it, either to say: No! or to say Yes! Oh, wretched man!" Isn't that frustration? And isn't that history up to date? Well, that is the Law of Moses.
You and I, dear friends, are living in a time in the world when there is not a law of all the multiplications in laws which can cope with human nature. Oh, what a time of lawlessness, which is only another way of saying, man's utter inability to answer to the law. Or, shall we put it this way: the law's utter inability to cope with man. There is this schism in human nature, this dividedness in personality, in constitution that works out in utter frustration. That is a word today isn't it ? frustration. My word, what a lot is covered by that word today.
There is a vast amount of intellectual comprehension of truth and doctrine which is not touching the situation, not meeting the need... A person may know Scripture most thoroughly and yet be the most awkward, cantankerous and peevish person in daily life; or go into business relationships, drive a hard bargain and send another man to the wall for his own ends. You may have all knowledge and yet profit nothing. It is the natural man receiving on the plane of the natural man. It is mental apprehension of Divine truth, and it is not alive, it is not the 'water of Life, clear as crystal.'
Services may be very beautiful but dead... You may have very high ideals, sublime thoughts, and yet there may be just something that renders it all ineffective and you get nowhere. The modern pulpit goes as far as it can, with its own human mental outfit. If a man happens to be more scholarly and better educated than another, his interpretation is thought to be nearer the truth than that of anyone else. If he can put a construction upon the Word of God which is fresh, interesting, and fascinating and just satisfies the inquiring minds of his hearers, they go away with the idea that that is truth. That is no argument at all - no criterion whatever. To make the whole thing a matter of scholarship is to get off the road.
Moses was learned in all the knowledge of the Egyptians, and yet he had to have forty years of isolation and discipline. At the end, Moses had to say, 'I cannot,' and then God was able to say 'Now I have got you down to a level where I can say, 'I can.' Before Saul of Tarsus could go anywhere for God, he had to talk like this: 'Sinners, of whom I am chief'; 'I am the least of all the apostles and not meet to be called an apostle'; 'the things that I counted gain, I now count but loss'; 'I received it not from men, it was made known to me by revelation'; 'it pleased God to reveal His Son in me.' That is not objective achievement; that is subjective experience, and between the two there is all the difference that there is between life and death...
The man who brags of scholarships and argues that because he has a higher brow than anybody else and is therefore nearer the truth is probably the most blind of all men... The moment you introduce the element of the natural man into the ministry you kill it. The river of the water of Life clear as crystal will not flow through the channel of the flesh.
What you minister must be born of the Spirit of God in your spirit, and it must not be interfered with by the flesh. God will not let the stream of living ministry flow until the flesh is laid forever in death and it is no longer I but Christ.
God Bless You
Poppa
Editor's Comment:
About the Writer Author
State:
Texas
Country:
United States
Email:
jerryleekay@suddenlink.net
Website:
www.jerryleekay.net
Profile:
Click here!
|
|
Most Recent From This Writer
Inspired Still - Designs by LaVellaK
Design Challenged? No worries! Among many design services I offer, I'll gladly design hats, t-shirts and more for you or your organized Special Event. Email me at justask@worthfinding.com for details!
Photgraphy & Design by LaVella Kraft
|
Select Article or Story
|