If I Be Lifted Up. . . 10/15/2009

Joh 12:32 And I, if and when I am lifted up from the earth [on the cross], will draw and attract all men [Gentiles as well as Jews] to Myself. Joh 12:33 He said this to signify in what manner He would die.

Do we believe this or not? Is what Jesus said here true or did He mean something else? To hear many speak, you would think that Jesus needs to be encouraged to draw people to Himself that we must wait for Him to draw them before they can understand.

Show that to me in the Bible. You will not find it. It is not there, yet that is a commonly held doctrine so much so that many will get into heated arguments defending the idea that we must ask the Lord to draw people to Himself.

My friends, He is already doing so.

It takes our own humility, our laying down of ourselves in all areas of our lives for us to begin to see. If WE are not willing to do this, then it is NOT God’s fault! What do I mean, you may ask?

If someone does not hear the truth of the scriptures, why is it so? Is it because God is not drawing them or is it because they choose not to believe? Those are the only two choices we have available. It is either God’s fault or it is the person’s fault. So who should then be blamed for the lack of faith, for not believing the Truth?

We see it all through the Bible. God blames the person. God even blamed them in the Old Testament. Whenever He sent a prophet to the people, He demanded they Choose to believe that prophet. Whenever they did not believe the prophet that is when the discipline and often the chastisement came.

The same is true in the New Testament. We see Paul admonishing the believers for NOT believing, for not walking in His Truth. Nowhere do we ever see any of the writers of the New Testament telling the people that they need to ask to be drawn to the Lord. None of them ever speak as though the people need to wait until God does something so that they can understand. In fact, they are encouraged time and time again to believe, have faith, trust, obey, etc. This whole idea of them having to wait until God decides it is time for them to believe is non-existent!

We are told in many places that TODAY is the day of salvation, to believe today, to obey now, to trust the Lord with our whole heart, NOT to rely on what we think, etc. I have never seen anyplace that says we have to wait on God to do something so that we might believe. Why?

Because God is already doing everything necessary for us to walk in life and godliness.

2Pe 1:2 May grace (God's favor) and peace (which is perfect well-being, all necessary good, all spiritual prosperity, and freedom from fears and agitating passions and moral conflicts) be multiplied to you in [the full, personal, precise, and correct] knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
2Pe 1:3 For His divine power has bestowed upon us all things that [are requisite and suited] to life and godliness, through the [full, personal] knowledge of Him Who called us by and to His own glory and excellence (virtue). 2Pe 1:4 By means of these He has bestowed on us His precious and exceedingly great promises, so that through them you may escape [by flight] from the moral decay (rottenness and corruption) that is in the world because of covetousness (lust and greed), and become sharers (partakers) of the divine nature.

Is this true or not? If we have already been given these things, if the promises are already ours, then whose responsibility is it to apply them to our lives, God?

Just because God is drawing us does not mean we have understanding of all things however. Nor does it mean that we are living out His truths in our lives. We may have to ask God to prepare us, to cause us to be made willing to lay down the things that stand in our way; we may have to ask God to help by opening our eyes and understanding to His truth so that we might comprehend what it is that He is teaching us.

In no way does any of this mean God is not drawing us or that the Holy Spirit does not stand ready to teach us. It means we are unwilling to let go of things or unwilling to be corrected in all areas of our lives. God stands ever ready to teach us all of this, IF we are ready to lay down all things.

We must also remember that some knowledge/understanding is dependant on other knowledge. Just as one cannot learn calculus prior to learning addition and subtraction or in fact multiplication, division, fractions, algebra and trigonometry prior to being able to grasp calculus, so too in spiritual realms we must come to certain understandings of submission, consecration, trust, belief prior to being able to walk Just Like Jesus.

Again, the fault does not lay with God, but rather with our reluctance to submit to His teaching in the manner He desires. We are told by Jesus Christ that in order to obtain the Kingdom of God we must get rid of all other things, yet, we act like that teaching is not a requirement. We want to hang onto as much of our life as possible without giving it up so we can have God and our desires as well.

All of this falls on us and our willingness to let go of everything. It has nothing to do with waiting for God to draw us into this understanding or that deeper truth. It is all about our submission to the Lord in all things. IF we were truly willing to give up all things, we could be walking just like the early disciples did in just as short of time. How quickly was it that they were able to perform miracles in the name of Jesus? How quickly were they able to bring healing? Remember, it was a short 3.5 yrs from their calling to Pentecost and Peter giving one of the greatest salvation messages ever given.

It took Paul from being a dedicated Pharisee, actually persecuting the Church to being the most prolific writer of the New Testament in just a span a years. He did not even have the Bible we have. All he had was the Holy Spirit to teach him and he learned his lessons well!

We should be ashamed of our lack of dedication and walking out our faith to the world. We give ourselves excuse after excuse, blaming it God by saying that He has not revealed that to us yet. WHY NOT? Because we have chosen to hang on to our lives and are comfortable in the way we live; we are unwilling to give up everything for Him!

That is the deciding factor, NOT GOD!

Let us stop blaming God for our own lack of dedication and consecration. Let us name the thing it truly is, self-centeredness and pride! We want our lives and God as well. We are no different than the people in the congregations other than we may have given up more of man’s traditions and doctrines; but we are not willing to give up our lives so that Jesus Christ may live His life through us.

What happened to Peter, Andrew, James, and John when Jesus called them? What did they do? What did they give up? Have we done as much? If we have not, then how can we expect to live the kind of lives they lived? I have heard so many people say things like, “God just has not revealed that to me yet,” or “It is not yet God’s timing for my understanding,” as though God is to blame for our lack of spiritual growth! I can tell all who are reading these words right now, it is not God’s fault, plan, or anything else that might belong to God that we are where we are spiritually speaking. It is directly our own responsibility for our spiritual growth or Paul and the other writers of the New Testament would not say the things they say to their readers.

Gal 3:1 O YOU poor and silly and thoughtless and unreflecting and senseless Galatians! Who has fascinated or bewitched or cast a spell over you, unto whom--right before your very eyes--Jesus Christ (the Messiah) was openly and graphically set forth and portrayed as crucified?
Gal 3:2 Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the [Holy] Spirit as the result of obeying the Law and doing its works, or was it by hearing [the message of the Gospel] and believing [it]? [Was it from observing a law of rituals or from a message of faith?]
Gal 3:3 Are you so foolish and so senseless and so silly? Having begun [your new life spiritually] with the [Holy] Spirit, are you now reaching perfection [by dependence] on the flesh?

So who does Paul blame for their unspiritual condition? Does he ever say anything like they need to wait for God to reveal it to them or for God’s timing to be right for spiritual growth? WHERE?

1Th 4:1 FURTHERMORE, BRETHREN, we beg and admonish you in [virtue of our union with] the Lord Jesus, that [you follow the instructions which] you learned from us about how you ought to walk so as to please and gratify God, as indeed you are doing, [and] that you do so even more and more abundantly [attaining yet greater perfection in living this life].
1Th 4:2 For you know what charges and precepts we gave you [on the authority and by the inspiration of] the Lord Jesus.
1Th 4:3 For this is the will of God, that you should be consecrated (separated and set apart for pure and holy living): that you should abstain and shrink from all sexual vice,
1Th 4:4 That each one of you should know how to possess (control, manage) his own body in consecration (purity, separated from things profane) and honor,
1Th 4:5 Not [to be used] in the passion of lust like the heathen, who are ignorant of the true God and have no knowledge of His will,
1Th 4:6 That no man transgress and overreach his brother and defraud him in this matter or defraud his brother in business. For the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we have already warned you solemnly and told you plainly.
1Th 4:7 For God has not called us to impurity but to consecration [to dedicate ourselves to the most thorough purity].
1Th 4:8 Therefore whoever disregards (sets aside and rejects this) disregards not man but God, Whose [very] Spirit [Whom] He gives to you is holy (chaste, pure).

Who does Paul say is responsible for walking with the Lord? Who is responsible for obedience, submission, learning, etc? Are we to wait for God to reveal all of this to us? If we do wait, then we will wait forever, or until God gets ‘sick’ of our lack of progress and puts us in a position where we choose one way or the other!

If there is any passage in the Bible that tells us that it is God’s responsibility to reveal His truth to us and that we are to wait until He does so, I have never read it. So, show me the passage that teaches us this doctrine. Where is it? Where does the Bible say that God will wait to reveal His truth to us in His good time and allow us to wallow in our sin and/or false teaching until He does so? Please show it to me, I would love to put this on God and not on myself.

But my friends, I am afraid that there is no such verse. It is not God’s fault. We are told that He is more than willing to help us, teach us, enable us, do for us, but He waits for us to actually trust Him in faith! He waits for us to have a heart of obedience, of submission, where we have truly consecrated our whole lives utterly to Him. That principle, I see all through the Bible.

So, please explain where this idea comes from that we cannot progress until God draws us and we are waiting on His timing to so that He might do so. Where is the passage? Who did you learn this teaching from? It must be in the Bible somewhere or it is not from God!

Always, I read where God is waiting on us to surrender, to believe, to trust, to lay down our lives, to stop relying on ourselves, but never does He keep us waiting on His drawing us to Himself. He is already drawing us.

There are times when we do wait on God. However, we need to be honest about what we are talking about when we are waiting. Is it due to God not wanting us to be taught? In fact, is it due to God not wanting us to have something from Himself at this time? NEVER! It almost exclusively is because we are not willing to lay down our lives, our wants, our desires, our demands, our plans, our understanding, etc, etc ,etc.

There are specific timings regarding ministry, where we are to go, to whom we are to speak, such as we see Paul speaking of when he was not allowed to go to Asia.

Acts 16: 6And Paul and Silas passed through the territory of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Word in [the province of] Asia. 7And when they had come opposite Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them. 8So passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. 9[There] a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man from Macedonia stood pleading with him and saying, Come over to Macedonia and help us! 10And when he had seen the vision, we [including Luke] at once endeavored to go on into Macedonia, confidently inferring that God had called us to proclaim the glad tidings (Gospel) to them.

The Holy Spirit forbid Paul to go to Asia at that time and eventually led him and his companions to go to Macedonia. That is something completely different from the discussion of being taught by the Holy Spirit. In other places we see Paul admonishing the people for their lack of commitment, their unbelief, their lack of trust, and especially for their own lack of understanding. If they had to wait on the Lord to draw them into this teaching Paul was speaking of, WHY would Paul correct them?

Please explain why Paul would correct those people if they had to wait on the Lord to be taught. In fact, I cannot find this idea anywhere in the Bible. I again ask all readers to show me where the Bible says this.

If the Bible does not say this, then why does anyone say it? Where does this doctrine come from? Look at this passage>>>

I Cor 1: 28And 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, 29So that no mortal man should [have pretense for glorying and] boast in the presence of God. 30But 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]. 31So then, as it is written, Let him who boasts and proudly rejoices and glories, boast and proudly rejoice and glory in the Lord.

Can we not see the Truth contained in these verses? Unless man is utterly submitted to God, there is no way for man to understand the things of God. They are either a stumbling block or foolishness. Only when we choose to stop relying on what we think is corret, what we determine to be right or wrong, good or evil and choose willfully to say the very same things God says so that He is the One who determines good and evil in our lives for us, only then are we able to understand the things of God.

In order for man to recognize the importance of the things that God calls important, he must cease relying on himself. This is why we do not understand. It has nothing to do with God drawing us, or revealing to us the truths of God. Yes, He must do so, but He is always there to do that very thing. What did Jesus say the Holy Spirit would do in our lives?

John 16: 13But when He, the Spirit of Truth (the Truth-giving Spirit) comes, He will guide you into all the Truth (the whole, full Truth). For He will not speak His own message [on His own authority]; but He will tell whatever He hears [from the Father; He will give the message that has been given to Him], and He will announce and declare to you the things that are to come [that will happen in the future]. 14He will honor and glorify Me, because He will take of (receive, draw upon) what is Mine and will reveal (declare, disclose, transmit) it to you. 15Everything that the Father has is Mine. That is what I meant when I said that He [the Spirit] will take the things that are Mine and will reveal (declare, disclose, transmit) it to you.

This is the very job of the Holy Spirit, to be our teacher. Will He be less than equal to the task? Will He not exceed our understandings and desires as long as we choose to walk in obedienc to the Lord? What are we told about God’s desires for us?

Eph 3:20Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]--21To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen (so be it).

Are these verses true? Is the Holy Spirit within us to teach us the very truth of the Lord and is God always at work to do far more than we ask or think or ever believe He will do in our lives? Or is the Holy Spirit there in our lives deciding to give us little crumbs of blessing every now and then just to keep us in line and for His own sovereign pleasure?

I see nothing of the sort in these or any other verse in the whole Bible. So I ask once more, where does this false doctrine of our having to wait for God’s timing before He will teach us His truths? Where are the verses that prove this doctrine that so many Christians seem to hold dear?

No my friends, it is not God who limits us, it is not God who keeps us from understanding or learning. His pleasure is to give us the Kingdom, as Jesus said. Since we must believe and understand these deep things of God in order to live the Kingdom life on this earth, it is not God who is stopping us by meeting out these supposed crumbs of truth and understanding so many claim.

It is our own lack; our unbelief, lack of submission, lack of trust, lack of consecration, lack of dedication, and we have not laid down our whole lives, taken up our cross, and followed Him in the same manner the first disciples did. Can we even claim to be disciples? Have we looked at what Jesus said were the requirements of being His disciples?

Let me post these last few passages.

Matt 10:24A disciple is not above his teacher, nor is a servant or slave above his master. 25It is sufficient for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant or slave like his master. If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub [master of the dwelling], how much more will they speak evil of those of His household. [II Kings 1:2.] 26So have no fear of them; for nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, or kept secret that will not become known.

Matt 16:24Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone desires to be My disciple, let him deny himself [disregard, lose sight of, and forget himself and his own interests] and take up his cross and follow Me [cleave steadfastly to Me, conform wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying, also]. 25For whoever is bent on saving his [temporal] life [his comfort and security here] shall lose it [eternal life]; and whoever loses his life [his comfort and security here] for My sake shall find it [life everlasting].

Luke 14: 25Now huge crowds were going along with [Jesus], and He turned and said to them, 26If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his [own] father and mother [in the sense of indifference to or relative disregard for them in comparison with his attitude toward God] and [likewise] his wife and children and brothers and sisters--[yes] and even his own life also--he cannot be My disciple. 27Whoever does not persevere and carry his own cross and come after (follow) Me cannot be My disciple.

Now which of us can say we have done all these things? Have we truly denied ourselves taken up our crosses and followed Him? Do we hold Jesus above our families, including our spouses and children so that if His will contradicts the will of our family, we will obey the Lord? Do people accuse us like they accused Jesus, in a similar manner, saying we are prideful, arrogant, or even call us heretics?

Brothers and sisters, if we do not live like this, then first of all, how can we even say we are obeying the Lord? Second; we are not promised to be taught by the Holy Spirit all truth unless we are His disciples. So, unless we have done all these things; lived in this manner and walk Just Like Jesus ( see I John 2:6) we are not His dicsiples and do not have the promise of being taught all things by the Holy Spirit!

And then we complain by saying that we have not learned these things because God has not brought us to that place yet, or it is not God’s timing.

That is a lie from the pit of hell!

It is totally our own fault if we do not learn the deep things of God. Of course, we cannot know everything, but we can know and actually live far greater than we are living at this time and it has NOTHING to do with God’s timing, His will, or the drawing by the Holy Spirit. It has to do with our own submission, consecration, and obediece and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. Any other reason we may use is an excuse for our own lack!

This holds true for all of those that we make excuses for that have not come to fullness of the knowledge of holiness, righteousness, and purity (sanctification in other words). The reason they do not understand is because they choose not to lay down all of their preconceived notions and idea, their doctrines, teachings, understandings, beliefs, ministries, gifts, talents, abilities, families, possessions, and of course their very lives, being willing to only cling to those things the Lord Himself gives back to them. It is their own responsibility and their own fault.

Can they understand those things, sanctification, holiness, and righteousness without the Lord? No, they cannot. It does take the Lord, the Holy Spirit for us to understand ANYTHING Truly Spiritual. Yet, all of those who come in humility, laying down everything as Jesus commanded of His disciples will be taught these things and taught them very quickly if they remain teachable in all ways. As long as they are willing to be wrong about everything they currently hold dear and are willing to allow the Lord Himself to judge them as to whether He agrees with them or not and then let fall everything He does not approve personally, they will be taught His absolute Truth and it will also become a part of their lives.

This understanding I have presented is what I have been taught by the Lord Himself. It is in keeping with everything that I am aware of in the Bible and in no place does it contradict the scriptures. If any man or woman can show me where this understanding is not true and scriptural, I would immediately allow the Lord to change it or replace it to whatever He desires. If any reading these words have held to the idea that we must wait on God to teach us, please show me the scriptures, keeping them in context. If you have no scriptural basis for that belief, why do you hold it? I thought we were to go to the Bible, find out what it teaches and believe that. Anything else is a false doctrine.

I have not intended to hurt anyone through these words. There is no accusation against any individual. If any have become angry while reading this, I ask you why? If I am wrong, then correct me. If you are wrong, then repent. It is that simple my brothers and sisters. It may not be easy, but it is simple.

God bless you all!

A bondslave in Christ Jesus, Dirk