Day Fifty
WARNING:
Have an Active Spirit before God
“Then said the Lord to me, You have seen well, for I am alert and active, watching over My word to perform it.” Jeremiah 1:12 AMP
No matter what our relational status with the Lord, we are created in His image. But if we are believers, then we are being brought into His likeness in increasing degrees, from glory to glory. (2Cor3:18) We are being transformed into His likeness, thus as He is alert and active – so should we also be. But what does that refer to? Are we called to be like busy bees always in motion, steeped in Christian good works?
Not at all – in fact this posture of alertness and activeness refers more exactly to our spiritual posture before the Lord. As He is active, so we are actively pressing into Him in spirit. I’ve always seen this in a peculiar way. We are like Play-dough. When we receive the word of God into our hearts and we believe, there begins an active cooperation on our part. We take in the word and it is like a press or a mold. Quite vigorously we lay hold of the word, and press ourselves against it. It makes a great impression upon us! Like the old papyrus tablets of clay used for communication – we are marked by the word of God.
The apostle Paul said that he bore in his own body the marks of the Lord Jesus, that testified of His ownership of Paul (Gal 6:17). He also said that he was making up in his own body whatever was still lacking in the afflictions of Christ – for the sake of His Body. I wonder, – Do we have such marks of ownership and affliction upon us – ones which testify of Christ? We should!
We should bear in ourselves the very fingerprints of God. Not because He is so harsh and rough, but because we pursue Him so fervently. He draws us, and we run after Him. Like Matthew 11:12 reveals, “And from the days of John the Baptist until the present time, the kingdom of heaven has endured violent assault, and violent men seize it by force.” When we gain a glimpse of Who the Lord is and what He has provided for us, and at what cost – we cannot get enough of Him! We seize upon Him (with violent love and devotion of course) and never let go!
Now if you can’t fathom anyone wanting to seize upon Jesus, I direct you to the Gospels where he continually had his disciples standing by with a boat ready, because the people would throw themselves at Him and lay hold of Him because He was healing and delivering so many. May our experience with Him be so vital!
Back to the important point here, however — we are never to be passive and wishy-washy where the Lord is concerned. We are to be alert and active, just like Him. To be otherwise is in-fact dangerous. To be in a passive state spiritually can put you on the road to deception and destruction, because Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light (2Cor11:14). He is ever waiting to intercept and gain access to our thoughts, our will, and then our behavior to bring us into sin and under condemnation. Sin, after all, is commonly defined as “missing the mark.” Perhaps, that is missing the mark(-ings) of Christ in our lives, more than us missing a designated target?
Listen to some of the language Paul uses in Philippians Chapter 3 to frame his posture towards the Lord: “[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him …” (Phil 3:10); “…but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus (the Messiah) has laid hold of me and made me His own.” (Phil 3:12); “I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.” (Phil 3:14)
As you can see, Paul is not passive at all concerning the Lord – but he is actively pressing in and cooperating with all that He desires. As we press into the word, and it impresses us – we have a safety net of sorts. In our mind we have actively engaged the word of God, and thus are connected to truth. Our entrance into the presence of God is framed by this same word, and by our spirit that is in a posture like that of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. Kind of like a docking chamber between different environments (spiritual and natural), our active engagement prevents the influx of foreign and adversarial agents. When our link and engagement to the Lord is through the word and the Spirit of Truth, we are kept in safety. We know Who we are connected to. When we haphazardly and passively invite the Holy Spirit to come to us, take us over etc. we leave ourselves open to enemy deception and forces of darkness.
Believers, be secure, be safe, be active in your engagement with Jesus Christ and the spiritual realm.
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