"All those who want to be My disciples must come and follow Me, because My servants must be where I am." John 12:26....."As you look at the saints of old, you might want to ask what made these saints the kind of saints that they were? It was the intensity of their desire after God."
In the church today, there is a great effort being made to exhort all to "go and make disciples." It's a worthy effort and one I agree with. It's in how we go about it that troubles me. We put great focus on our going out for Him, but so much less in our first coming to Him. Could that be why so little power and real fruit come about from our efforts? I'm not talking numbers here, but the bearing of true spiritual fruit in those we seek to reach and say we are reaching.
In John 2, John the Baptist directs two of his followers to leave him and become disciples of Jesus. When Jesus notices them following after Him, He asks them what they want. Curiously, they ask Him where He's staying. He replies, "Come and see!" There's a lot there, but what stands out to me is that if one is to truly be a disciple of Christ's, it will require a full willingness to enter into the whole of His life. A willingness to as, John 12 shows, "be where He is." This is not a matter of just working for Him, no matter how pure and noble our intentions. The power of our witness will come from His Life shining out from within us, and this can only take place when we have deeply explored "coming" to and "seeing" from where He lives. Of having that intense desire for Him and His Presence that Tozer speaks of . Without it, no matter how much we go out or how much we "witness," we are doing it in our own strength and power. Only the life that has "come" and has "seen" is able to proclaim the life that He gives.
Something else Tozer said has really impacted me of late. Like me, I think most of us have always had a very low view of the Corinthian church depicted in the Bible. For sure they had many problems of sin and carnality. So much so that we usually end up feeling quite superior to them. Yet of them Tozer writes, "The Corinthians were about the least spiritual of the people to whom the apostle wrote, yet if they were to come into the average church today, they would set things on fire for they were a gifted people. They were a people who would fall on their faces and say, 'God is in this place.' They had something. They had a supernatural something." There is a great deal of zeal in our ranks today. But I think we are missing a large degree of that "something." The joy and wonder of His Presence perhaps. As Tozer says, "We have so much light, but so little de-light in Him."
If all this is so, why is it we have such a difficult time in fully coming to see where He is? Why is it so hard for us to be where He is? We humans have an amazing ability to be blind to answers that are right there before us. When John's followers complained that more and more people were going after Jesus and less and less were coming to him, he made the familiar statement, " I must decrease so that He might increase." He becomes less and less, as Christ becomes more and more. We all say we wish the same, but do our lives and ministries really reflect that? His power, which is the only power worth having, comes only from the disappearance of "us" and the increasing appearance of Him in us. The only way to come to where He is, is to go the way He went.....to the cross. We die. He lives. And His life is manifested in and through us. That's how we become actual disciples of His, and the way more disciples are made in Him. It's the only way. Only an intense desire for Him will take us to and through His cross. Is such desire present in you......in me?
Blessings,
Pastor O
In the church today, there is a great effort being made to exhort all to "go and make disciples." It's a worthy effort and one I agree with. It's in how we go about it that troubles me. We put great focus on our going out for Him, but so much less in our first coming to Him. Could that be why so little power and real fruit come about from our efforts? I'm not talking numbers here, but the bearing of true spiritual fruit in those we seek to reach and say we are reaching.
In John 2, John the Baptist directs two of his followers to leave him and become disciples of Jesus. When Jesus notices them following after Him, He asks them what they want. Curiously, they ask Him where He's staying. He replies, "Come and see!" There's a lot there, but what stands out to me is that if one is to truly be a disciple of Christ's, it will require a full willingness to enter into the whole of His life. A willingness to as, John 12 shows, "be where He is." This is not a matter of just working for Him, no matter how pure and noble our intentions. The power of our witness will come from His Life shining out from within us, and this can only take place when we have deeply explored "coming" to and "seeing" from where He lives. Of having that intense desire for Him and His Presence that Tozer speaks of . Without it, no matter how much we go out or how much we "witness," we are doing it in our own strength and power. Only the life that has "come" and has "seen" is able to proclaim the life that He gives.
Something else Tozer said has really impacted me of late. Like me, I think most of us have always had a very low view of the Corinthian church depicted in the Bible. For sure they had many problems of sin and carnality. So much so that we usually end up feeling quite superior to them. Yet of them Tozer writes, "The Corinthians were about the least spiritual of the people to whom the apostle wrote, yet if they were to come into the average church today, they would set things on fire for they were a gifted people. They were a people who would fall on their faces and say, 'God is in this place.' They had something. They had a supernatural something." There is a great deal of zeal in our ranks today. But I think we are missing a large degree of that "something." The joy and wonder of His Presence perhaps. As Tozer says, "We have so much light, but so little de-light in Him."
If all this is so, why is it we have such a difficult time in fully coming to see where He is? Why is it so hard for us to be where He is? We humans have an amazing ability to be blind to answers that are right there before us. When John's followers complained that more and more people were going after Jesus and less and less were coming to him, he made the familiar statement, " I must decrease so that He might increase." He becomes less and less, as Christ becomes more and more. We all say we wish the same, but do our lives and ministries really reflect that? His power, which is the only power worth having, comes only from the disappearance of "us" and the increasing appearance of Him in us. The only way to come to where He is, is to go the way He went.....to the cross. We die. He lives. And His life is manifested in and through us. That's how we become actual disciples of His, and the way more disciples are made in Him. It's the only way. Only an intense desire for Him will take us to and through His cross. Is such desire present in you......in me?
Blessings,
Pastor O
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