Despite how wicked, brutal and dangerous our world is, God doesn’t want us to be dismayed or overwhelmed by it. In fact, through the apostle Paul, God commands us to do the opposite!
Philippians 4:4-9
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace (Shalom) of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” (Emphasis added.)
How’s that for a universal response pattern… rejoice always and don’t worry about anything… no matter what? But as we all know, instead of rejoicing and resting, we tend to fret and focus on what is wrong and not good enough. When we do that, it’s psychologically impossible to obey the commands given above. That’s why we need to be trained, drilled and disciplined to maintain our focus on the abiding perfection of our indwelling risen Lord at all times. Only if we remain focused on His infinite Perfection are we able to keep drawing from His eternal Faithfulness and all Sufficient Grace and remain firmly established upon His Eternal Triumph over the powers of Darkness and their evil schemes. Then, when we’re properly trained, we are able to focus on and rejoice in our resurrected Lord at all times, regardless of what else is going on in this wounded, damaged, demon-possessed, Sin-corrupted and guilty world.
To worldly, ‘decapitated’ minds, thinking and reacting in this way, is impossible. And that’s why we need training before we’re able to do it. Our Master has connected us to Himself. That gives us all the Fire Power we need. And He is always with us, to show us how to use it and to be able to prove to whoever may be around us, that He is here with us and has already covered and provided for everything we will ever need, to fulfill our God-given identities, purposes and destinies… in Him! The Holy Spirit of God transmits what pertains to the Word…into us and the Word keeps us rooted in the Original Blessing that He was sent to be to us at all times.
So if we allow our Lord to teach and train us to walk and live as one with Him, we’ll be like a glove for God’s ‘Hand’. Our Master will be able to do what only He can do for the rest of the world… through us! And that’s why He separates and puts His disciples through boot camp. When He sends us back into the world, we’ll have to be ready and able to stand our ground, remaining constantly, perseveringly faithful to our Master while He continues to prove, as he accompanies us through our difficult situations, that He has overcome the enemy and is countering everything he tries to throw against us to defeat us. The Lord has to train us to stop being part of the problem, and become part of His Solution. So He teaches us to experience for ourselves the glory of being able to walk in the fullness of His Blessing at all times without fear, doubt or double-mindedness. He shows us how to walk in His blessing at all times so that we can share His Blessing with the rest of His Creation, even though at present, the world around us is fallen, mangled and not at all able to meet God’s perfect standards or pass His Judgment.
God isn’t sending us back into the world to hate, criticize, judge and damn what doesn’t suit us. People like that know nothing about living and building; all they know how to do is destroy and kill. Such people have no future! They are false prophets… and wolves in sheep’s clothing! On the other hand, our Master is here to train and discipline us so we can be equipped to keep loving, and putting up with, this fallen world even as we release His saving, redeeming, reconciling and Life-giving Presence into it. The world has no chance of passing God’s Judgment as it now is. It’s only chance is, if God’s Word, working through His Body on Earth, is able to add what only He can give… to the insufficiency that is already here. Only He can put God-Life into what is demon-possessed and dead; only He can create what the fallen world is lacking. Only He can be what all the rest of us are not! But our job is to bring His Presence into every life and situation that desperately needs Him, so that God’s awesome Presence will be able to ‘garden’ Reality back to total health and fruitful productivity!
So the parable we will now consider contains the underlying mental and emotional response pattern and attitude we need to transform into ‘God-Life Bringers’ for this needy Sin-corrupted, dead world that is filled with so many, ‘God-Needers’. If you absorb the pattern contained in this parable you will see what God wants to do through us in order to transform our surroundings. Here’s the parable. It’s called:
The Beautiful Oasis: A Parable
It began as the most desolate of wilderness deserts, vast, arid, and stretching out in all directions. It seemed like eternity. It was so immense that the nomad and his fellow tribesmen could have never crossed from one end of it to the other in a lifetime. Even after several very long lifetimes, they still would not have been able to perform such a feat.
At first, it seemed that, just like their ancestors, the members of this nomadic caravan would have no choice but to live all their days within this desolate barren world. That was partially true. They did have to live within these confines. But, as they found out later, it was not true that their home had to remain a barren desert.
These wanderers were a cold, unfeeling, harsh people. Their life was brutal and stark. The barrenness and the blazing sun had hardened their hearts, dried their souls and killed their imaginations. Their harsh existence had long since driven out any poetry that might have stirred in their souls. There were no songs to sing in their hearts, and no cause for dancing or joyfulness or hope for a brighter future. They simply existed and endlessly, aimlessly, traversed their merciless home…until they lived out their sterile existence and perished in the wilderness.
They wandered endlessly over the dunes, laden with their baggage which contained many leather sacks full of seeds. They were seeds of criticism, discontent, disparagement, negative judgments, pain, failure, desolation and hopelessness. These seeds were their tribal heirlooms handed down from generation to generation. As they made their way across the sands, they would scatter these seeds in all directions, sowing more pain, failure, desolation and hopelessness to what already lay around them. Thus, they maintained their tradition. Desert nomads always need more desert to cross, if they’re going to continue to be ‘desert nomads’. So their pattern of sowing seeds of desolation served to perpetuate and extend the desert…generation after generation. So the desert kept extending, growing ever larger and wider in all directions.
The nomad that served as their leader had lived like this for all of his thirty years. The further he and his people traveled, the more the barrenness spread out before them. It was a wonder any of them survived. In truth, no one in the tribe ever survived for long. They all died young. By the time he was thirty years old all the elders he had known were dead, including his siblings. And now, he was an elder and the leader of his people.
One afternoon the dismal caravan came upon a most amazing sight. Sunset was not far away. So they stopped to set up their camp for the night. It really didn’t matter where they stopped, since one part of their desert home was exactly like any other. But this evening, as they stopped to make camp, the leader looked ahead at the distant horizon, and saw a… it was a… well, really, he didn’t know what he was seeing. He had never beheld anything like it before in his life! It was something very strange and, to him, very out of place.
Fear and foreboding immediately gripped his soul. Whatever this was, he instinctively saw it as a threat. It was alien, eerie, something that should not have been there. It was something his parents and former elders would most certainly not have approved of or accepted. So, out of an elder’s sense of responsibility, he decided to investigate. While the others were setting up the camp, he decided to go ahead and scout and investigate this strange thing on the horizon. If there was any danger and something happened to him, at least his people would be forewarned and would have a chance to escape.
He had no words to describe what he saw when he got to the place. In contrast to the desert all around, this area was like an enormous deep green jade, embedded in a field of gold. He couldn’t have been more stunned if he had suddenly been transported to another planet. He didn’t know what to make of it, but actually, what he was seeing for the first time in his life, was – an oasis. It was filled with lush green things – trees, bushes, plants, vegetables, fruit and a cool, cool, soothing comfort that his sun-tortured senses had never felt before.
There was water everywhere; water in wells, water gushing up out of springs in the earth and water flowing down from verdant rocky grottos. Green living things were thriving and spreading out in every direction. Palm trees, ferns, figs, dates, pomegranates, oranges, limes, cherries, grapes and many other lovely and delectable things he had never seen abounded in the trees, bushes, plants, vines and flower gardens before him. It was so, so strange, but yet so, so pleasant, refreshing, peaceful, beautiful and good!
“Hello,” said a friendly voice, snapping him out of his amazed reverie. He turned to see a kindly, seemingly ageless man, with white hair and flowing white beard coming toward him. “Welcome friend! Welcome to our camp! My name is Shalom. Come out of the sun. Please…sit and rest.”
The man led him into the coolness, to a very comfortable, inviting spot by a spring of cold, clear water. After his guest was seated, Shalom offered him some water to drink and a bowl of colorful fresh fruit and nuts.
“Please my friend, rest here. And after you’ve rested a bit, if you like, you can wash the dust and grit of the desert off your body in this wonderful pool. You look like you’ve been traveling a long way and you must be very weary.”
The nomad was thunderstruck at all that he saw around him. “What are all of these things,” he asked. “And where did you get all of this water? I have never seen anything like this in all of my life. I know the desert. I’ve lived in it since birth. But what is this? At any given time, my people are fortunate to have a few goatskins full of stale water. But here, I cannot believe my eyes. Look at all of this water!”
Shalom responded with a pleasant chuckle. “This, my friend, is what is called, ‘an oasis in the desert.’ This is what happens when you have the eyes to see what our gracious God has lavishly provided for the well-being of all of His creatures. Once you can see the awesome potential in it, you learn to respect and appreciate and take care of it. And when you do that, you cause it to grow and multiply; and this is what happens. When you learn the secret wisdom of ‘gardening reality’, you can do what we do and soon you too will have wonderful trees, bushes, plants and grasses such as you see before you. You can have this in any part of the desert, wherever you may go – IF – you learn the secret of adding good things to whatever bad and evil circumstances you encounter, regardless of what they are when you first encounter them. The secret is this:
“NEVER REACT TO BAD THINGS IN WAYS THAT WILL MAKE THEM WORSE! ALWAYS REACT IN WAYS THAT WILL MAKE THEM BETTER!”
“People that violate this secret have no future. But those that are wise enough to follow it, move from Darkness into Light!”
Then the ageless man leaned closer and said, almost conspiratorially, “Strange as it may seem, it wasn’t too long ago that this very spot we’re enjoying, looked exactly like the spot where your people yonder are setting up their camp even as we speak!”
Shalom’s guest stared at him with open mouth. “It did?” he asked.
“Yes my friend, it most certainly did. When my people first came here, this was all desolate, barren desert… just as it is over there, where your people are! But look at it now! And in a short time, we are going to leave this place. A few of our families will remain, to continue to expand and develop this particular oasis. As they do, the rest of us will move on. Then we will stop at another barren area and do the same thing all over again. In time, if we make enough of these oases, the entire desert and its climate will transform into something we can’t even imagine!”
“But how can that be? What makes these changes? Where did you get the seeds for all of this? Did you bring them with you?”
“Oh no,” Shalom chuckled. “We never have to haul bags of seeds with us. God has already provided all the seeds we will ever need. They are waiting for us no matter where we go! The seeds for all of these wonderful things you see were all embedded in the sand beneath your feet. They’re everywhere. You could never exhaust them in a million years! Wherever you go, you can always find the seeds for a beautiful oasis in the desert—right under your feet! All you need are the eyes with which to see them, and the wisdom that enables you to sow, protect, tend, and water them. Do that, and the desert transforms. This happens wherever we go, regardless of how desolate the place is when we first arrive. In a short time, it becomes what you see here, around you… beautiful, alive and fruitful.
And there are also seeds of tremendous potential within each and every child that is born into our tribes! And they too can be gardened and nurtured and developed so that we can all grow, mature and develop into superior levels of developed talents and wisdom, and developers of opportunities that lie all around us! If you develop an area, an oasis is born; but if you develop your children, only God knows all that will then be possible!
“Your people and mine are moving in opposite directions,” Shalom continued. “As we head in the direction from which you came, we will find only more desolate, barren desert. But if you and your people continue to move on your present course, you will travel the territory from which we came; and you will find one oasis settlement after another, after another, even bigger ones than this one.”
“But how is it that you can have so much water?”
“Do you not know?” the jovial man asked. God has placed water everywhere. It is under the sand, oceans of it—more water than you could ever imagine. It is there, waiting to serve anyone who will dig and make way for it to spring forth to the surface. Look, over here, at this pool you’re next to. A short time ago, this was just dry, rocky sand, just like everywhere else. But my people began to dig for the water that God placed beneath the sand. They knew it would be there and look, sure enough! Water is bubbling up in abundance. And we’ve done the same thing over there and over there and beyond. We do this wherever we go, and this is always the result! Isn’t it wonderful?”
“But what about all of these growing things?—tell me more about the seeds. These are nothing like the seeds our elders gave us.”
“We did not get these seeds from our elders. They are God’s gift to the world! These seeds predated your elders! They are seeds that grow into this lush beauty that is all around you. Look!” Shalom placed his hand into the sand. He came up with a handful and showed it to the nomad. “Look closely. Here… do you see this? It is the seed of a date tree. And because it can produce a tree, it can produce innumerable groves of trees! Do not be misled by how small it is. The ability to multiply in each of these seeds is infinite! And look here; here is a seed for apples. It too can grow and do the same thing! There are overwhelming amounts of all kinds of seeds scattered throughout the entire desert! No one could begin to count them. And no one can calculate how many others just like itself each one would be able to produce once someone has the sense to begin taking care of them. God in His gracious bounty has lavishly placed them here for anyone that will obey Him and learn His ways. We could never exhaust the supply. No one need starve or die of thirst, once we learn God’s ways, and the marvels of endless multiplication and love-inspired giving that He has put into each tiny seed.”
Shalom showed the nomad an incredible array of different kinds of seeds that he kept picking out of the sand beneath their feet. Then he pointed out all of the living, thriving, lush examples of the fruit-producing trees, bushes, plants and grasses that each of those little seeds were capable of becoming.
“Now my friend, look at this: Notice these little trenches that we’ve dug. They lead from the springs and wells we first created. Now notice: these canals travel in all directions. Once we find the seeds God has hidden throughout the sands, and plant them in the plots we assign to them, we strategically dig little canals that will bring them water from the wells and springs we’ve dug. As soon as the water hits the sand where the seeds are, the seeds fill and begin to swell. Then they burst into life and grow and bear their marvelous fruit. And each seed can reproduce itself many times over! Isn’t it wonderful? God is so good and gracious. We never waste time and energy criticizing or complaining about the desert. There is no time for that. We do not have to live like orphans or victims unless we choose to be orphans and victims. But why choose that? No matter where we go, we can get busy developing the exceedingly rich potential of the place—thanks to the mercy of God, our Father. He has made it possible for us to travel light; nevertheless, we always have abundance. God’s abundance is waiting for us to develop it… wherever we choose to stop!”
The nomad could not believe his eyes and ears. These people were living in exactly the same desert that he and his people had been living in for generations. But no one had ever told his people about the God-given Living Water beneath the surface of the sand. No one had told them about the countless seeds God had placed for them, everywhere, wherever they happened to be. If they had only known, they could have stopped in one place long enough to dig for the water and search for the seeds God had placed there for them. Then they too could have developed oasis after oasis and rested and thrived in their cool, protective shade. And they could have also looked for the seeds of creativity and productivity God has planted within each person in each tribe. And they could have learned to garden those seeds to magnificent levels of productivity as well!
But instead of planting the seeds given to them by God, in their ignorance, they kept planting the seeds of criticism and negativity… which can never produce anything but more barrenness, desolation, sterility and hopelessness. This was their tribal legacy that was bequeathed to them by the previous generations of ignorant, very critical and habitually negative ancestors. So, instead of being able to enjoy pools and wells of water from the oceans beneath their feet, they had been forced to wait in miserable, parched agony, and settle for the sparse amounts of rain water that mercifully, but rarely, fell from the skies.
But, thanks to the kindness and hospitality of his newfound friends, the nomad went back to his camp and told his people of the marvels he had seen. Then he brought them all to Shalom’s oasis. There was more than enough room and food for all. They stayed there for the next few weeks. And Shalom and his people gladly ‘gardened the newly-arrived nomads, and taught them the wisdom of God’s wonderful ways. They taught them the secrets of the water and the wisdom, power and abundance that were in each of the seeds that lay hidden in each child, and were strewn by God everywhere throughout the desert sands. They taught them how to recognize and garden the seeds within each person in their tribe… so that they could develop their marvelous potential and thus learn to be originators of many new oases of tremendous, beneficial beauty and fruitfulness.
From that time forward, the nomads started a new tradition. Eventually they formed a huge funeral pyre made up of all the seed sacks of criticism, negativity, discontent, disagreement, barrenness, desolation, sterility and hopelessness. Then they set the sacks on fire. The smoke from the burning sacks rose up to the heavens and provided a sweet-smelling aroma that greatly pleased God’s nostrils. The destruction of those seeds would set the tribe forever free of the awful, self-perpetuating critical, negative, self-destructive traditions of their ancestors. Now they could begin to search and find and garden all the Good that our awesome God has provided for us all, and within us all… seeds that can be found everywhere, that have been waiting to be gardened, since the beginning of time.
Thereafter the former desert nomads could be seen traversing the desert. But they were no longer desert nomads, they had transformed into oasis nomads! Now they wisely continued to dig more wells and springs, adding to those already created by Shalom’s tribe. They too became adept at finding the water and the seeds that God had placed all over the earth, and within every person, from the dawn of Creation. They became adept at connecting the water and the seeds until oasis after oasis burst into being out of what appeared at first to be capable of nothing but barrenness. And the people of their tribe began to grow, mature and flourish as individuals. And they began to develop new tribal traditions that proved to be a blessing to whoever was fortunate to be around them!
As the generations passed, the life spans of the former desert nomads increased tremendously. And if you could have soared like a bird, far above the desert sands, you would have seen an ever-increasing new pattern begin to cover the desert floor. From high above, it looked like a green, polka dot pattern. The green dots were oases. And they became more numerous and covered more and more of the desert floor, expanding in all directions. The dots chronicled the travels of the gardening nomads. For wherever they went, the barren desert began to turn green and lush. And instead of barrenness and desolation, they cooperated with God to provide abundant life, shade, rest, food and refreshment for any passersby that might be in need of such wonderful life-giving things.
Ponder the Meaning of the Parable
We will always be tempted to go back to thinking, acting, reacting and interacting in ways that are natural to decapitated, fallen, radically independent flesh. We will feel a pull to go back to viewing life on this earth through the negative, damning, critical perspective of the Serpent as soon as we encounter mean, nasty, hateful people that we know deserve to be punished. But God sent His living Word to absorb all the punishment and condemnation and take it upon Himself, to shield and save us all! And we’re commissioned to be His image and likeness and embody and release Him so that He can be free to do what His Father sent Him here to do!
The Serpent on the other hand, is a malicious destructive murderous critic. He infected the whole human race with his hate-venom. And since we’ve been wounded, broken and corrupted by his Sin, we’re born mentally and emotionally removed from God. We don’t know Him as He really is, so we can’t trust Him to care for us in an ‘airtight’ infinitely trustworthy way. Thus it’s natural for us to live in fear and dread and try to control everything and obsess over what is inadequate, failure-prone and not good enough according to our subjective standards. We fear what is different and reject and abuse what jars, offends and displeases us. And we try to get those things out of our lives. Thus we forget about the awesome Original Blessing God imparted in the very beginning, to each human He created and remain unaware that He has already restored the Blessing to us, through His Son’s Perfect Finished Atonement! So we must constantly remember what He blesses and empowers us to be and to do:
Genesis 1:27-31
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ Then God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food’; and it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good…”
If we fail to realize that every human being is created to be God’s image and likeness and that we’re all made to succeed, thrive and overcome anything that comes against us, the Serpent succeeds in deceiving and decapitating or severing us from God’s living Word, just like he did to Adam and Eve. It’s true that we were all greatly damaged by Sin. But God sent His Word, who contains the fullness of that Original Blessing in Himself, to seek us out and reunite with us so that He could cover our spiritual nakedness and restore the Blessing to everyone that would hear and obey Him.
Ephesians 1:3-6
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” (Emphasis added.)
The fullness of God’s Blessing has been fully restored to those of us that have been re-connected to our Head, the Word of God. If we forget that, we continue to labor under the shame and victim identity inflicted by the curse of Sin and Death. That’s why our world remains so barren, sterile and desolate compared to what God intended it to be. We continue to add to the misery that is already here, making bad things even worse than they were before we arrived on the scene! But we can’t get away with reacting to things in ways that will plant even more negative, destructive seeds into our souls, brains and lives and those of the people around us.
And we must realize that every human being also begins as a tiny seed. And the living Word of God is the ‘Living Water’ that must reach and make contact with each of those seeds. When He gives them His Life, and imparts His Wisdom to them, they begin to grow and thrive and they are able to fulfill their purpose and destiny. He transforms them into His own image and likeness. And He is the image and likeness of God! So despite Sin and the fall and all the damage that caused, once those seeds are redeemed by God’s living Word, they can be restored. If they are gardened faithfully and properly, they will grow and develop into what Almighty God intended them to be!
So how awesome is the responsibility that we all have…as we plant the seeds of our reactions into ourselves…and our children…and all the people in our lives? What are we sowing? And how do we view and think as we go through the events of each day? How do we regard and treat one another? Well, whatever it is we plant…that is exactly what we are going to reap in much larger quantities…when the time for harvest comes!
Galatians 6:7-8
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
Our job as disciples is not to sow criticism, contempt, lack, fear and desolation into our desolate world. Why increase the wickedness, treachery, injustice, malice, selfishness, corruption and hopeless inferiority that already plague the world? The critic’s perspective always deceives us into believing we’re totally justified when we judge, condemn, punish, avenge, disgrace and reject whatever we judge to be ‘not good enough’. But we’re not supposed to use the fallen world’s false scale of 1 to 10. That scale comes from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil! And it always leads to destruction and Death!
If we think and react as critics, we’re also predators because we’re judging things to be good or bad according to what they do for us and what we can get out of them. If people do what we want them to do, we ‘accept’ and ‘love’ them. But if they fail to meet our expectations and serve our interests, we reject, punish and abandon them. But how much of God is in that? How much of His Grace and eternal Blood Covenant Rescue Mission Love does that embody? Did God react that way to us when we were still His corrupt, sinful, rebellious enemies? (Cf. Eph. 2; Romans 12; 1 Cor. 13; Philippians 4; Col. 3)
God already knows how bad the world is. But He doesn’t obsess over what is evil and deficient. His living Word is Infinite Good! So He sends His Word to be The Answer to all that is wrong and missing in this fallen world. The risen Messiah is not here to lose or be victimized and disappointed. He is here to be The Blessing for all of us. He comes to create and add new ingredients that flow from His eternal Perfection. He is the Light and Truth that destroys Darkness and Deceit. He is our all-sufficient Healer, Restorer, Liberator, Redeemer and Provider! (See Gal. 5:16-25)
So to embody and reveal His awesome Presence as He abides in us, we must be trained to see as He sees and think as He thinks and want what He wants and respond to every human we encounter as He does. The glove must properly fit the Hand that works from within it. As our Master obeys the Father that sent Him, He blesses us and the evil within us is overcome. Then He equips us to bring and release His Presence to everyone around us so that He can pierce, penetrate and impregnate them with His Life and fruit. In that way our Master adds and supplies what is missing in the world…through our obedient faith, focus and disciplined perseverance. And we become one with Him in His obedience to the Father that sends Him, serving as His ‘points of entry’ and ‘bases of operation’ on the earth.
God’s Word has fully atoned for and redeemed His fallen, Sin-corrupted Creation. So He is here to ‘cover’ all nakedness and transform everything into something so excellent that God will derive eternal satisfaction and Glory from it. Many people will refuse God’s grace; and God will judge them for it when the time for that arrives. So don’t worry about that. God’s Justice will prevail. No one will get away with anything. But now is not the time for judgment. It is time for the reconciliation and salvation of what was lost. So our job is to demonstrate God’s redeeming Presence and His healing saving ways, no matter what!
The people we are tempted to criticize, scorn, condemn and discriminate against are not the real enemy. They are not the root cause of the evil. They are the decapitated victims of the Powers of Darkness. God is here to rescue all of those poor deluded, entrapped humans that still remain caught in the Serpent’s coils. So because we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in our Messiah, we have full access to God’s infinite Treasury of ‘Blood-purchased’ Grace. Now we can apply the fullness of God’s Blessing as He gives it to us, sharing it with whoever happens to be around us. That’s how God can garden wounded lost people and draw them into His Kingdom regardless of how wrong and disgusting they appear to our natural human sensibilities. Our training will help us to develop supernatural response patterns that will enable us to stand and hold this Heavenly ground. And as we receive the supernatural empowerment that God keeps giving to us from within, we can overflow with His grace and share it with whoever He brings into our sphere of influence…even with enemies that despise and try to harm us! We can embody what Psalm 136 reveals about God’s lovingkindness being everlasting and maintain our status as sons of God and co-heirs with the risen Messiah:
Colossians 3:1-4
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on Earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory!”
When our Lord saw Matthew the despised tax collector, and the immoral Samaritan woman at the well, and greedy, despicable Zacchaeus and demon-possessed Mary Magdalene, and all the other Sin-corrupted, self-serving, ‘not good enough’ people He encountered, He didn’t despise or give them what they deserved. Nor did He do that with you or me. He was sent by His Father to give us all… what HE deserves! If we realize that and allow Him to work through us, He will fulfill the meaning of His Name on our behalf. His name is – Yeshua, Jesus, SALVATION!
Our Master, when He operated on Earth as the Son of Man, showed us God’s Wisdom by His example. He was just as weak and needy as we are! And so time after time, He would go off to be alone with His Father and the Holy Spirit. Operating as one of us, the living Word of God always trusted in and fed upon and drew from the eternal Perfection of the Father that had sent Him to Earth. The Son of Man drew from what God had already said and done. He kept drawing from the perfect Original Blessing God gave to every human in the very beginning. The Word of God made flesh remained perpetually dependent upon His Father, like a branch depending on its vine. And we are to remain connected to God’s triumphant risen Word, just like that. We can learn what Mary of Bethany learned. When her sister Martha focused on the work she had to do, she had not yet learned the secret of focusing on and continually drawing from the perfect Work God’s Word had already done on her behalf. So the Lord let her in on the secret:
Luke 10:38-42
“Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, ‘Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.’ But the Lord answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.’”
Now it’s our turn to start doing what Mary did. Abide with your Master. Focus on and abide in Him at all times. Keep receiving what His Perfect Presence is here to give you and add to your circumstances and situations. Draw from the perfection of His finished work… so that you can learn what Peace and Rest and rejoicing really mean!
Matthew 11:27-29
“All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.”
John 7:37-39
“Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’ But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”