Monday 25 May 2009
Special Services
We have special services Monday Night (tonight) & Tuesday Night at 18:00 at the Alkantrand Community Hall, c/o Lynnwood & Daventry Rd Lynnrodene. Wednesday night we have a normal 7 o'clock service. All welcome.
Sunday 10 May 2009
Vital knowledge and true wisdom
We do not need all kinds of knowledge. We need vital knowledge or true wisdom. Vital knowledge is that kind of knowledge which produces life, which is the wisdom of God. To the Jews, its a stumbling block. To the Greeks it's foolishness, but to us, the Gospel is the power of God and the wisdom of God. The wisdom of God is not only the knowledge or the information of the Gospel, but it is the intimate knowledge of the Person Jesus Christ. Intimate knowledge is that which you have experienced of the Person Jesus Christ. To know someone intimately is different than to know things about that person.
Truth is not correct information. Truth is a Person, Jesus Christ. This Person is also a place to dwell in. We can live in Christ, in Truth, in the Spirit. The Spirit searches out the bottomless things of God, and reveals it to us. People with a mindset of information and law can never know this, because it is revealed in fellowship of the heart with the Spirit, and not in studying of information with the brain. Love can not be learnt in books, but can be felt only in experience of intimate fellowship. The hearing and believing of the Gospel (of what Jesus did on the cross for us) produces the experience of this love. The Gospel directs your heart to the source of life, which is the cross of Christ.
If all the knowledge in the world is like a target, like a dart board, knowledge is the big area around the bulls eye with all the sectors and marks and stripes, and God's wisdom is the bulls eye. People want to know God, and then they set off trying to know more of God. They try to figure out how they can be more acceptable to God. They try to gain more knowledge about Him, in stead of becoming more acquainted with Him as a Person. We do not need to expand our field of knowledge about God, but to go deeper into vital knowledge. We need a deeper revelation of that which is the very core of life. Everything flows from there, and nothing we need in life is excluded. In fellowship with God, our every need is met, and our every question is answered. If we try to get the answers in stead of getting to know the Person, our focus is misdirected, and we miss the bulls eye. All our answers will then be wrong. If we stop trying to know everything with our minds, and start to experience Him with our hearts, all the answers are open and plainly seen, because He reveals it to your heart.
God's wisdom is foolishness to the world. The wisdom of God is Jesus Christ crucified. If someone claims to have revelation, and it is not consistent with Christ and Him crucified, that "revelation" is no revelation at all, but simply misdirected knowledge, which is just another distraction from Christ our Wisdom.
At the cross, the love of God toward us is demonstrated. You will never know God, if you try to please Him. But He will reveal Himself to you in an instant when you simply receive His sacrifice of His life for you with your heart, as an act of love towards you, and not as doctrine and information that needs to be studied and processed. We need not to try and know more. We need God to reveal deeper and deeper insight into what He did for us; into the small bulleye. At the surface, this bullseye has a small surface area, and seems like a small amount of knowledge, but it is deep knowledge. Deep and bottomless.
We don't need more surface knowledge, but deeper understanding and revelation of the knowledge we have already heard and attained. You think you know what Christ did for you on the cross. If you did, there would be no condemnation in your life, all your prayers would be answered instantly, and you would be a perfect person. So clearly we need Him to tell us more about what He did. We need Him to reveal to us the deep and bottomless things of God, which came our way through the cross of Christ.
Now imagine this bulls eye to be shaped like a funnel. The deeper you enter into it, the closer it draws you to the centre. This centre is the core of life. This is the core of our existence and needs to be our only focus: Jesus Christ's love for us, demonstrated on the cross of Golgotha. The more He reveals to you about the cross, the more true wisdom you will have, and the more you will experience Him, and the inheritance He gave you. The more we look elsewhere for knowledge, the less we will know Him.
If we browse around on the rest of the target, we will only move away from Him, and learn things about Him from an outside perspective. This can never fulfill you. The more we study doctrines, and laws, the less we experience Him. The more we meditate on what He did on the cross, the more He gets an opportunity to reveal Himself to us. Forget everything which is not Christ. He will reveal all knowledge to you. Just trust Him, and realise that He did everything for you!
Keep on hearing the Gospel. Keep on hearing about what Jesus did for you, and close your ears to interesting facts about Him. Close your ears to disputes and debates about whether Jesus truely lived, or whether he rised, or whatever else. Close your hearts to fruitless reasonings about things surrounding Him, like traditions of the times, rituals and feasts. Close your hearts to disputes about doctrines, social issues, and church politics. He lives now. He lives in you if you believe, and He is faithful! You will truly experience Him!
You need to know that He loves you, that you are totally forgiven forever, and that He has no judgement in His heart towards you.
1 Cor 1:17 For Christ (the Messiah) sent me out not to baptize but [to evangelize by] preaching the glad tidings (the Gospel), and that not with verbal eloquence, lest the cross of Christ should be deprived of force and emptied of its power and rendered vain (fruitless, void of value, and of no effect).
1:18 For the story and message of the cross is sheer absurdity and folly to those who are perishing and on their way to perdition, but to us who are being saved it is the [manifestation of] the power of God.
1:19 For it is written, I will baffle and render useless and destroy the learning of the learned and the philosophy of the philosophers and the cleverness of the clever and the discernment of the discerning; I will frustrate and nullify [them] and bring [them] to nothing.
1:20 Where is the wise man (the philosopher)? Where is the scribe (the scholar)? Where is the investigator (the logician, the debater) of this present time and age? Has not God shown up the nonsense and the folly of this world's wisdom?
1:21 For when the world with all its earthly wisdom failed to perceive and recognize and know God by means of its own philosophy, God in His wisdom was pleased through the foolishness of preaching [salvation, procured by Christ and to be had through Him], to save those who believed (who clung to and trusted in and relied on Him).
1:22 For while Jews [demandingly] ask for signs and miracles and Greeks pursue philosophy and wisdom,
1:23 We preach Christ (the Messiah) crucified, [preaching which] to the Jews is a scandal and an offensive stumbling block [that springs a snare or trap], and to the Gentiles it is absurd and utterly unphilosophical nonsense.
1:24 But to those who are called, whether Jew or Greek (Gentile), Christ [is] the Power of God and the Wisdom of God.
1:25 [This is] because the foolish thing [that has its source in] God is wiser than men, and the weak thing [that springs] from God is stronger than men.
1:26 For [simply] consider your own call, brethren; not many [of you were considered to be] wise according to human estimates and standards, not many influential and powerful, not many of high and noble birth.
1:27 [No] for God selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is foolish to put the wise to shame, and what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame.
1:28 And God also selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is lowborn and insignificant and branded and treated with contempt, even the things that are nothing, that He might depose and bring to nothing the things that are,
1:29 So that no mortal man should [have pretense for glorying and] boast in the presence of God.
1:30 But it is from Him that you have your life in Christ Jesus, Whom God made our Wisdom from God, [revealed to us a knowledge of the divine plan of salvation previously hidden, manifesting itself as] our Righteousness [thus making us upright and putting us in right standing
with God], and our Consecration [making us pure and holy], and our Redemption [providing our ransom from eternal penalty for sin].
1:31 So then, as it is written, Let him who boasts and proudly rejoices and glories, boast and proudly rejoice and glory in the Lord.
1 Cor 2:1 AS FOR myself, brethren, when I came to you, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony and evidence or mystery and secret of God [concerning what He has done through Christ for the salvation of men] in lofty words of eloquence or human philosophy and wisdom;
2:2 For I resolved to know nothing (to be acquainted with nothing, to make a display of the knowledge of nothing, and to be conscious of nothing) among you except Jesus Christ (the Messiah) and Him crucified.
2:3 And I was in (passed into a state of) weakness and fear (dread) and great trembling [after I had come] among you.
2:4 And my language and my message were not set forth in persuasive (enticing and plausible) words of wisdom, but they were in demonstration of the [Holy] Spirit and power [a proof by the Spirit and power of God, operating on me and stirring in the minds of my hearers the most holy emotions and thus persuading them],
2:5 So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men (human philosophy), but in the power of God.
2:6 Yet when we are among the full-grown (spiritually mature Christians who are ripe in understanding), we do impart a [higher] wisdom (the knowledge of the divine plan previously hidden); but it is indeed not a wisdom of this present age or of this world nor of the leaders and
rulers of this age, who are being brought to nothing and are doomed to pass away.
2:7 But rather what we are setting forth is a wisdom of God once hidden [from the human understanding] and now revealed to us by God-[that wisdom] which God devised and decreed before the ages for our glorification [to lift us into the glory of His presence].
2:8 None of the rulers of this age or world perceived and recognized and understood this, for if they had, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.
2:9 But, on the contrary, as the Scripture says, What eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man, [all that] God has prepared (made and keeps ready) for those who love Him [who hold Him in affectionate reverence, promptly obeying Him and
gratefully recognizing the benefits He has bestowed].
2:10 Yet to us God has unveiled and revealed them by and through His Spirit, for the [Holy] Spirit searches diligently, exploring and examining everything, even sounding the profound and bottomless things of God [the divine counsels and things hidden and beyond man's scrutiny].
2:11 For what person perceives (knows and understands) what passes through a man's thoughts except the man's own spirit within him? Just so no one discerns (comes to know and comprehend) the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
2:12 Now we have not received the spirit [that belongs to] the world, but the [Holy] Spirit Who is from God, [given to us] that we might realize and comprehend and appreciate the gifts [of divine favor and blessing so freely and lavishly] bestowed on us by God.
2:13 And we are setting these truths forth in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the [Holy] Spirit, combining and interpreting spiritual truths with spiritual language [to those who possess the Holy Spirit].
2:14 But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated.
2:15 But the spiritual man tries all things [he examines, investigates, inquires into, questions, and discerns all things], yet is himself to be put on trial and judged by no one [he can read the meaning of everything, but no one can properly discern or appraise or get an insight into him].
2:16 For who has known or understood the mind (the counsels and purposes) of the Lord so as to guide and instruct Him and give Him knowledge? But we have the mind of Christ (the Messiah) and do hold the thoughts (feelings and purposes) of His heart.
Heb 12:12:1 THEREFORE THEN, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us,
12:2 Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
12:3 Just think of Him Who endured from sinners such grievous opposition and bitter hostility against Himself [reckon up and consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you may not grow weary or exhausted, losing heart and relaxing and fainting in your minds.
I pray that the simplicity which is in Christ will be revealed to you, and that you will know the deep boundless and bottomless things of God!
Blessings!
Gerrit
Truth is not correct information. Truth is a Person, Jesus Christ. This Person is also a place to dwell in. We can live in Christ, in Truth, in the Spirit. The Spirit searches out the bottomless things of God, and reveals it to us. People with a mindset of information and law can never know this, because it is revealed in fellowship of the heart with the Spirit, and not in studying of information with the brain. Love can not be learnt in books, but can be felt only in experience of intimate fellowship. The hearing and believing of the Gospel (of what Jesus did on the cross for us) produces the experience of this love. The Gospel directs your heart to the source of life, which is the cross of Christ.
If all the knowledge in the world is like a target, like a dart board, knowledge is the big area around the bulls eye with all the sectors and marks and stripes, and God's wisdom is the bulls eye. People want to know God, and then they set off trying to know more of God. They try to figure out how they can be more acceptable to God. They try to gain more knowledge about Him, in stead of becoming more acquainted with Him as a Person. We do not need to expand our field of knowledge about God, but to go deeper into vital knowledge. We need a deeper revelation of that which is the very core of life. Everything flows from there, and nothing we need in life is excluded. In fellowship with God, our every need is met, and our every question is answered. If we try to get the answers in stead of getting to know the Person, our focus is misdirected, and we miss the bulls eye. All our answers will then be wrong. If we stop trying to know everything with our minds, and start to experience Him with our hearts, all the answers are open and plainly seen, because He reveals it to your heart.
God's wisdom is foolishness to the world. The wisdom of God is Jesus Christ crucified. If someone claims to have revelation, and it is not consistent with Christ and Him crucified, that "revelation" is no revelation at all, but simply misdirected knowledge, which is just another distraction from Christ our Wisdom.
At the cross, the love of God toward us is demonstrated. You will never know God, if you try to please Him. But He will reveal Himself to you in an instant when you simply receive His sacrifice of His life for you with your heart, as an act of love towards you, and not as doctrine and information that needs to be studied and processed. We need not to try and know more. We need God to reveal deeper and deeper insight into what He did for us; into the small bulleye. At the surface, this bullseye has a small surface area, and seems like a small amount of knowledge, but it is deep knowledge. Deep and bottomless.
We don't need more surface knowledge, but deeper understanding and revelation of the knowledge we have already heard and attained. You think you know what Christ did for you on the cross. If you did, there would be no condemnation in your life, all your prayers would be answered instantly, and you would be a perfect person. So clearly we need Him to tell us more about what He did. We need Him to reveal to us the deep and bottomless things of God, which came our way through the cross of Christ.
Now imagine this bulls eye to be shaped like a funnel. The deeper you enter into it, the closer it draws you to the centre. This centre is the core of life. This is the core of our existence and needs to be our only focus: Jesus Christ's love for us, demonstrated on the cross of Golgotha. The more He reveals to you about the cross, the more true wisdom you will have, and the more you will experience Him, and the inheritance He gave you. The more we look elsewhere for knowledge, the less we will know Him.
If we browse around on the rest of the target, we will only move away from Him, and learn things about Him from an outside perspective. This can never fulfill you. The more we study doctrines, and laws, the less we experience Him. The more we meditate on what He did on the cross, the more He gets an opportunity to reveal Himself to us. Forget everything which is not Christ. He will reveal all knowledge to you. Just trust Him, and realise that He did everything for you!
Keep on hearing the Gospel. Keep on hearing about what Jesus did for you, and close your ears to interesting facts about Him. Close your ears to disputes and debates about whether Jesus truely lived, or whether he rised, or whatever else. Close your hearts to fruitless reasonings about things surrounding Him, like traditions of the times, rituals and feasts. Close your hearts to disputes about doctrines, social issues, and church politics. He lives now. He lives in you if you believe, and He is faithful! You will truly experience Him!
You need to know that He loves you, that you are totally forgiven forever, and that He has no judgement in His heart towards you.
1 Cor 1:17 For Christ (the Messiah) sent me out not to baptize but [to evangelize by] preaching the glad tidings (the Gospel), and that not with verbal eloquence, lest the cross of Christ should be deprived of force and emptied of its power and rendered vain (fruitless, void of value, and of no effect).
1:18 For the story and message of the cross is sheer absurdity and folly to those who are perishing and on their way to perdition, but to us who are being saved it is the [manifestation of] the power of God.
1:19 For it is written, I will baffle and render useless and destroy the learning of the learned and the philosophy of the philosophers and the cleverness of the clever and the discernment of the discerning; I will frustrate and nullify [them] and bring [them] to nothing.
1:20 Where is the wise man (the philosopher)? Where is the scribe (the scholar)? Where is the investigator (the logician, the debater) of this present time and age? Has not God shown up the nonsense and the folly of this world's wisdom?
1:21 For when the world with all its earthly wisdom failed to perceive and recognize and know God by means of its own philosophy, God in His wisdom was pleased through the foolishness of preaching [salvation, procured by Christ and to be had through Him], to save those who believed (who clung to and trusted in and relied on Him).
1:22 For while Jews [demandingly] ask for signs and miracles and Greeks pursue philosophy and wisdom,
1:23 We preach Christ (the Messiah) crucified, [preaching which] to the Jews is a scandal and an offensive stumbling block [that springs a snare or trap], and to the Gentiles it is absurd and utterly unphilosophical nonsense.
1:24 But to those who are called, whether Jew or Greek (Gentile), Christ [is] the Power of God and the Wisdom of God.
1:25 [This is] because the foolish thing [that has its source in] God is wiser than men, and the weak thing [that springs] from God is stronger than men.
1:26 For [simply] consider your own call, brethren; not many [of you were considered to be] wise according to human estimates and standards, not many influential and powerful, not many of high and noble birth.
1:27 [No] for God selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is foolish to put the wise to shame, and what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame.
1:28 And God also selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is lowborn and insignificant and branded and treated with contempt, even the things that are nothing, that He might depose and bring to nothing the things that are,
1:29 So that no mortal man should [have pretense for glorying and] boast in the presence of God.
1:30 But it is from Him that you have your life in Christ Jesus, Whom God made our Wisdom from God, [revealed to us a knowledge of the divine plan of salvation previously hidden, manifesting itself as] our Righteousness [thus making us upright and putting us in right standing
with God], and our Consecration [making us pure and holy], and our Redemption [providing our ransom from eternal penalty for sin].
1:31 So then, as it is written, Let him who boasts and proudly rejoices and glories, boast and proudly rejoice and glory in the Lord.
1 Cor 2:1 AS FOR myself, brethren, when I came to you, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony and evidence or mystery and secret of God [concerning what He has done through Christ for the salvation of men] in lofty words of eloquence or human philosophy and wisdom;
2:2 For I resolved to know nothing (to be acquainted with nothing, to make a display of the knowledge of nothing, and to be conscious of nothing) among you except Jesus Christ (the Messiah) and Him crucified.
2:3 And I was in (passed into a state of) weakness and fear (dread) and great trembling [after I had come] among you.
2:4 And my language and my message were not set forth in persuasive (enticing and plausible) words of wisdom, but they were in demonstration of the [Holy] Spirit and power [a proof by the Spirit and power of God, operating on me and stirring in the minds of my hearers the most holy emotions and thus persuading them],
2:5 So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men (human philosophy), but in the power of God.
2:6 Yet when we are among the full-grown (spiritually mature Christians who are ripe in understanding), we do impart a [higher] wisdom (the knowledge of the divine plan previously hidden); but it is indeed not a wisdom of this present age or of this world nor of the leaders and
rulers of this age, who are being brought to nothing and are doomed to pass away.
2:7 But rather what we are setting forth is a wisdom of God once hidden [from the human understanding] and now revealed to us by God-[that wisdom] which God devised and decreed before the ages for our glorification [to lift us into the glory of His presence].
2:8 None of the rulers of this age or world perceived and recognized and understood this, for if they had, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.
2:9 But, on the contrary, as the Scripture says, What eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man, [all that] God has prepared (made and keeps ready) for those who love Him [who hold Him in affectionate reverence, promptly obeying Him and
gratefully recognizing the benefits He has bestowed].
2:10 Yet to us God has unveiled and revealed them by and through His Spirit, for the [Holy] Spirit searches diligently, exploring and examining everything, even sounding the profound and bottomless things of God [the divine counsels and things hidden and beyond man's scrutiny].
2:11 For what person perceives (knows and understands) what passes through a man's thoughts except the man's own spirit within him? Just so no one discerns (comes to know and comprehend) the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
2:12 Now we have not received the spirit [that belongs to] the world, but the [Holy] Spirit Who is from God, [given to us] that we might realize and comprehend and appreciate the gifts [of divine favor and blessing so freely and lavishly] bestowed on us by God.
2:13 And we are setting these truths forth in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the [Holy] Spirit, combining and interpreting spiritual truths with spiritual language [to those who possess the Holy Spirit].
2:14 But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated.
2:15 But the spiritual man tries all things [he examines, investigates, inquires into, questions, and discerns all things], yet is himself to be put on trial and judged by no one [he can read the meaning of everything, but no one can properly discern or appraise or get an insight into him].
2:16 For who has known or understood the mind (the counsels and purposes) of the Lord so as to guide and instruct Him and give Him knowledge? But we have the mind of Christ (the Messiah) and do hold the thoughts (feelings and purposes) of His heart.
Heb 12:12:1 THEREFORE THEN, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us,
12:2 Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
12:3 Just think of Him Who endured from sinners such grievous opposition and bitter hostility against Himself [reckon up and consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you may not grow weary or exhausted, losing heart and relaxing and fainting in your minds.
I pray that the simplicity which is in Christ will be revealed to you, and that you will know the deep boundless and bottomless things of God!
Blessings!
Gerrit
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