“For Yours is the Kingdom … and the power…” Mt 6:13
Some people have said the heart wants what the heart wants, and we haven’t thought that a problem.
But do you understand… your heart’s desire un-submitted before God can be a great liability. In fact it/they can draw you powerfully, into error, delusion, and destruction.
Think of it! You have a hunger for God! For more of Him! Be careful! There are ways that can be appropriately fulfilled. Ways that are pleasing to God. And then there are ways that are not.
But the first thing, is to lay these desires for God, even your hunger to know Him more – before Him!!! Leave the satisfying of that desire in His hands! It is too powerful for you!
Even what seems like a virtuous desire, like wanting more of God can lead you astray.
It is here, in the power of your wanting more, that you must lay down even that desire – before God. It must be brought captive to Him – to His obedience.
in fact, all your greatest desires, your greatest hopes, your most profound perceptions, your perfect ambitions for the Lord, your dreams, all that is the very best of you — must bow down and submit to the Lord, alongside all that is the worst of you, your greatest fears, greatest liabilities, greatest weaknesses…
Because it is all you – good and bad, nestled nicely in a skin package that you can not separate from fleshly motivations. But the Lord can.
Left unchecked or un-submitted, your flesh can not just impact your soul motivation, but it can impact your spirit motivation as well.
People that have un-disciplined sensuality (think appetites/hunger) in their soulish thinking, can have it impact the spirit. It is a lust that has been allowed to run rampant, has been attempted to be cleaned up, but has not been repented of, forsaken, or renounced.
It must be put off! It cannot be cleaned up as being profitable for God’s use.
This is the heart of hunger that will not submit, nor obey the Lord. Jude speaks about it. These people are always going after their own desires, controlled by passions (even disguised as passion for the Lord).
While they have professed Christ, they have never moved from being carnally minded and controlled by their flesh, to being controlled and led by the Spirit.
They have not learned to die to themselves and to put off the old nature. They put new clothes on their old man. Like new wine in old wineskins.
It comes out as error. People proclaim Christ yet embrace doctrines incompatible with Who He is or what He has said.
They look to New Age inclusions and practices, because while they profess hunger for God and having more of Him, they are really hungry for more of His power through any means. We live after all in an age of overreaching, that started when Satan first sought to overreach God Himself…
One of the most amazing yet haunting quotes I have ever read is from Watchman Nee:
God does not look at how fervently we preach the gospel or how willing we suffer for Him; He looks to see how obedient we are. God’s kingdom begins when there is an absolute obedience to God – no voicing of opinions, no presenting of reasonings, no murmuring, no reviling….Wherever there is a church on this earth which truly obeys God’s authority, there is the testimony of the kingdom and there Satan is defeated.”
Spiritual Authority, p. 105
What is this saying to us today? It is not your hunger for more that moves God and dispells darkness. It is your obedience to God and His word that will usher in the kingdom and defeat Satan.
It is not about our passion for the Lord that Satan is defeated – it is about our submission to His ways that victory is brought in. It is in our full obedience that we profess our love for God and where His Kingdom is able to come in!
We are in a time when the cry is to experience God’s goodness and His power. We have become like addicts, junkies waiting for the next fix.
But that is not what He has called us to.
Paul said he apprehends that for which Christ has laid ahold of him…. not the thing which Paul hungers for. But the thing for which God has laid hold of Paul!
Laying hold of that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of us, coming along side the Lord and His plans, this is the Way of the Kingdom…
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