Spirit Vessels

"Though we are made to hold Christ, to hear from God the Father, Son, and Spirit,
though we are made for gold, we have chosen dross."

WE ARE CREATED spirit beings. Just as a cat can only be a cat, react like a cat, see things through a cat’s eyes, we can only walk correctly by seeing through the eyes of the spirit. Adam, male and female, walked in the Spirit. Though they had a physical body which contacted the physical earth, they heard God in the spirit, through the Spirit of God. After sin, he and she walked incorrectly, solely in the flesh and not as they were made (created) to walk. To live solely by the carnal mind and impulses is to be a cat who thinks he is a dog.

Man without salvation, without Christ, which is Jesus, who is Christ, and the Spirit of God, who is the power or anointing of Christ, is a vessel dedicated to God, one made for grander, higher things, which instead holds only waste material. That is not what we were made for. One can use a table as a stepping stool, but he runs the risk of damaging the table and falling and injuring himself. That is not what it is made to do, but instead, to gather family together to eat and enjoy a meal. All our education and knowledge, all we have sought and gained through self-effort are so much filth stuffed into our vessel. Though we are made to hold Christ, to hear from God the Father, Son, and Spirit, though we are made for gold, we have chosen dross. To refine silver, to purify gold, dross (slag) must be removed. King Nebuchadnezzar had a vision where the feet of a statue mixed iron with clay, and the revelation of it, as spoken by the prophet Daniel, was of its weakness to stand. Only a purified vessel, dedicated to God, used by God, will fill its purpose.

We are made to reflect the praises of our Maker, to speak like Him, sound like Him, and live and move and breathe His wonder, His goodness. We have instead, are instead deaf to His voice. We have relegated God speaking to the occasional Sunday when the mood is just right. But we are made to hear Him every day, every minute of the day, at any minute in time. In the grocery store, in line at the restaurant, waiting to pick up our children in the school driveway. When people pass our path, the Spirit of God in us should be able to reach out through us without there being a pew and an altar first. But sitting in the pew and not having an altar isn’t acceptable either. We are vessels full of His nature, filled with His truth. We should know Him on a scale that His presence touches those who are around us, whether we know them or not. Not as the continual dripping of a faucet but as a river from within, as a fountain bubbling up, yielded to God’s will in that moment.

“Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” (Psalm 23:5b)

We have depersonalized the gospel to a large extent, and though the reasons for this are many, at the heart of it, is a missed truth – that our vessels as the church, as the body of Christ, are filled with Him for a reason. Not for our own sufficiency, but for that embrace, that encouragement, that drawing in of those who are hurting around us. A cell phone, a big screen, and a dance tune are not the same as Jesus seen in your gaze, heard in your voice, felt in your hands. Though God embraces technology to further the gospel, technology does not replace people. (Minister Jesse Duplantis intends to buy a satellite so that no one can ever interrupt communication. Minister Kenneth Copeland gave an airplane from his fleet to send men of other denominations, whose doctrine he would maybe not agree with point-for-point, into Afghanistan when political allies prevented it.)

And flashing lights, moving background images, and fast-paced music does not replace worship. There is a place for it. God writes all genres because He loves people. He desires to speak to people in the language that they understand. But God is a spirit, and we must worship Him in spirit. Not the flesh. Our tendency is to get louder and leap higher and go faster, but God hears our thoughts and knows the intents of our heart. He wants to be first place and in being lifted higher, be louder than what our flesh and our mind want to do. Can we fast from secularism in the church? We cannot hear Him when what is nearest to us is more prominent than He is.

We must forsake not the assembling of ourselves together, but greater than that, we must forsake not His presence in ourselves. When attending a gathering becomes a wall of separation, God would rather you did as Psalm 91:1 instructs us and abide in Him. This is a twenty-four hour a day instruction. We are never to not abide in Him. We are never to listen to our flesh and our carnal thinking and ignore His voice. We are never to choose what “I want to do” over what He is asking. Every footstep, every word, is to be His completely because we are so close to Him, so intimate, that nothing can separate us. As a husband and a bride are united in covenant, each knowing the other entirely, so we are to be in the same manner with our Father, with Jesus our Savior, and the Holy Spirit who aids us in our weakness, teaches us about Jesus, and guides us through the valley as the light upon the Shepherd’s staff.

We are His children, made like Him. As I am part of my father and my mother and share likenesses with them, we are made like God, returned to the order of Genesis, where God made man a living soul and called him “very good.” Not as vessels turned upside down to make marks in the mud, nor leaky pots whose analogies are repeated almost unending, but refired in the kiln of God’s power to hold yet even greater things than we could ever imagine.

“Those who are motivated by the flesh only pursue what benefits themselves. But those who live by the impulses of the Holy Spirit are motivated to pursue spiritual realities.” (Romans 8:5 TPT)

“The mature children of God are those who are moved by the impulses of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 8:14 TPT)

“If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:25)

“Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete….So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you.” (Colossians 3:9-10, 12a MSG)

Image by Aristal Branson from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com