God is still the God of yesterday, today and forever. He never changes but we do. Circumstances, emotions, our environment, our past experiences, people, life, challenges, etc are often able to mold our behavior, expectations, responses and ultimately, our character. But God remains the same.
He is eternal. But often, our faith, our commitment, our purity, humility, malleability to His presence and His Spirit vacillate, waver, or even get extinguished.
And as time passes, we may become used to these things being a part of our lives and then wonder why signs and wonders, miracles, healing, true repentance, power, glory, the tangible presence of God is not being felt when we worship or when we come together in the name of the Lord.
The Lord hasn’t changed. We have. He is ever as intense, ever tangible, and His word is still as potent as He always was and always will be. But our degrees of fluff in character determine the extent of Him we ultimately experience.
Personally, some of the things the precious and very gentle Spirit of God has allowed me notice in my own character are things which if not taken note of, will go by unnoticed, or unchallenged because they are not blatantly observable or explosive. So as sly as the enemy is, he propagates these things in my life, with my consent, and gradually edges out the Spirit of God from comfortably residing in my life. As though i were my own and did not belong to God!
Things like irritability… Getting easily irritated with certain things, however annoying they may be, (that is no excuse). That irritability repeatedly occurring towards people and situations specially positioned to nip at me only results in a lifestyle of anger steadily developing into a glacier underneath the surface of the still calm water many may see.
But notice figuratively how that ice cold glacier forming under the surface becomes a hinderance when the fire of God is trying to burn in my life and make me too hot to touch and effective in working as a pure vessel.
Do you see where I am going with this?
There are many of us who are quote “pretty good people” but have allowed many things into our lives to inhabit God’s space. And we are not functioning at the level we should. It is not because God is not willing to bless, use, or move in and through your life. It is because just like atherosclerosis, there is a hardening in your heart occurring gradually over time from unnecessary residue from the things you allow into your system. And a heart attack is only a small distance away! A cutting off of blood flow to the vital areas of your heart needed to remain alive spiritually. Whether like me, it is nonchalance and irritability, or yours is perhaps the secret sin of pride, lust, malice, hate, disregard for others, …or is it more blatant like sleeping around and saying “God will forgive me”, etc… Yes you may not fall down and die from these things because God is a merciful God and his patience is long-suffering; b ut because of His righteousness, He cannot work in and through you with all that junk.
I can never drink from a dirty glass. That’s just me in matters of cleanliness and hygiene under normal circumstances.
Now imagine the God of all heaven and earth; a righteous, holy, faithful, perfect, infallible God. He can’t drink the worship from your life as He can clearly see all the little bugs you harbor and carry within you consistently. It is not as though His all-seeing, all-knowing self cannot discern them in you vividly!
So we all need to change, to come back to holiness and brokenness. To be cleansed and live righteously. We must aspire to be perfect as our Father is perfect. We must be cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ, daily dying to our flesh and truly living in the Spirit of God. For that alone, is the way we can become effective, clean tubes through which God can flow. That is the only way we can walk the walk and not just talk the talk. #beSanctified #repent #HeIsWilling #AreYouWilling? #ThereIsMore
