As Revealed In Christ

"... and they rejoiced and praised God because of me."

A MAN in the pulpit, called by God and ordained by men, is anointed to preach the Word of God. The anointing is on the office and the position he holds, and the Word itself is anointed. So we see here two sides of the Spirit’s Presence upon the sermon spoken. If that man lays hands on the sick, the Word of God says they will recover, and the anointing will be present to heal (Mark 16:18). The Spirit will flow through him into those he lays hands on. Here is a third view of God in the man called to preach.

That man can choose a sermon he prefers to speak over the one the Spirit desires. He can NOT hear what the Spirit is voicing or can hear and ignore it. With a few exceptions of complete rebellion, the Spirit, who is love and kindness and patience, will still anoint his words, although maybe not in the fullness he would have had if he’d listened and obeyed. If He’d WALKED IN THE SPIRIT.

We tend to walk in the flesh and call it the Spirit, but what we are doing, what we are saying, came from ourselves. A woman in a video laid hands rather violently on those beside her, and I was startled by her manner and that the Presence of God still flowed. In another video, masses of a congregation fell backward, something common in a past generation, yet I knew it was not God’s doing in this hour. How can a man speak a sermon and it be anointed (because God does not repent or change His mind when He calls someone to serve Him as a minister of the gospel), yet that sermon not be God’s will at all? How can anyone lay hands on people after having spoken criticism and they not see the formers is God and the latter was not? And why would God honor them?

God works through imperfect vessels. And no, this is not a cracked pots, broken crayons, sermon. I am actually opposed to both images because Jesus Christ went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil (Acts 10:38). He wants lives, minds, and bodies to be WHOLE. It is, however, a talk with you on walking fully in the Spirit and the love of God. All of our actions, all of our words, must be done in love. Are we praying for people, both those we know who serve God and those we pass or know of who worship false gods and idols? Did we pray the love of God sincerely or are we using them as an example, calling them out before men?

The love of God covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). Ours, theirs, those people in that place, that minister who slipped up, another that made deliberate mistakes. We are not the judge of them, we are examples of the love and forgiveness of an Almighty God who would become human flesh in order to die a cruel death in order to save WHOSOEVER. I hear so little foundations taught in the church. I listened to a sermon by a minister on righteousness which has altered my thinking. I am 54 and grew up in the church. Why did I not know this before now? Some of it was me being hard of hearing (and if I was hard of hearing, then so are many others sitting in the pew). I have admitted this. I have said that when fear was ravaging my thinking, I couldn’t remember anything about “faith” or redemption except the children’s song, “Jesus Loves Me,” and I sang it often.

Faith is not a thing. It is not a device or a meter or a way to get God to work. It is simply a word used to describe our reaction to God’s love for us. It’s not us baking a cake and we need flour, eggs, oil, and sugar. These are objects we gather in our hands and mix together. Faith is trust in the most trustworthy One. It is believing in the love and faithfulness of God. We should teach people who He is, get off the hamster wheel of faith teaching that barely mentions God at all, and focus on His attributes. Make Him visible, touchable, audible. I hear ministers say God only speaks in the heart, as an inward witness. It is true He speaks in this manner, and yes, the devil does His best to draw people into error over experiences in the supernatural. But we must raise our desires, raise our expectations of Him, because there is much He will do for the humble believer who reaches out to Him, setting fear aside.

We are not meant to fear the devil and get lost in the feelings of the flesh and the mind, but we are to be lead of the Spirit, even in our bodies and our minds, where we think like Him and move where He wants us to move, and HEAR HIS DESIRES in those words we speak into someone’s ears. It is having complete unity with Him. just as Jesus, as a man, was in such great unity that He would dare to walk on water in the height of a storm. We should be just as willing, just as enabled, without making a jest over it because in our minds “only Jesus” was called to do that.

The truth is, God will do through us and in us what we are humble enough to allow, what we are mature enough to hear and obey, what HE CAN TRUST US WITH. That one who stays where he is in the pulpit and never advances further will be blessed in his work, but he will miss out on what God hungered to do because of his criticism of others. That he made fun of people instead of crying out for them, and it fueled the same in those listening, will keep him from the complete will of God for him. Men have used the apostle Paul’s various words to the churches as an excuse to judge, but Paul said of himself that when men heard that one who’d crucified Christians now preached the same gospel, they rejoiced over him. Which man are we?

“In the churches of Judea, I was not known by anyone who loved and accepted Christ. They had only heard the report: ‘The man who used to persecute us is now proclaiming the good news that he once tried to destroy—the good news about God as revealed in Christ.’ And they rejoiced and praised God because of me.” (Galatians 1:22-24, Remedy)

A Chinese gang member who no one would have given five seconds of their time was saved miraculously from death three times in a matter of a few days because of the faithful prayers of his mother. No one made an effort to speak to him about God except one friend who gave him a small New Testament Bible. He couldn’t read it yet held onto it for honor’s sake. Honor he understood. Jesus, his mother had told him, would rescue him. He had no gospel in him. He couldn’t quote the Word. Yet when death stared him in the face, he called out on the Savior and was healed and delivered. I put this here because I find myself asking, What if? What if God would do something that great for someone else? Or do we believe it is only specific to him? That young man even opened the Bible and asked God to help him read and was completely healed. He both knew the words he saw and understood what he read. He hadn’t even heard that Jesus heals. But he knew Jesus rescues, so wouldn’t He help him read?

Watch “Chinese Mafia Leader Gives His Life to Jesus.”

Who have we sold short? I looked at the most beautiful crowd of primarily Muslim youth and marveled at their mannerisms. They were so cultured and statuesque. I heard the Spirit’s heartbeat for them and afterward spent time in prayer. For I knew, He has ways of working amongst them. His hand is not short to save, and I will not be the one who chooses politics and hell fire preaching over God’s love, for it runs so much deeper. One verse says we pull some out of the flames, so we choose flames. We’ll dangle them over it. No, again our perspective is wrong. It is that men put themselves there, and we are the ones who pull them back, not push them forward to shine our manmade lights on ourselves. As if we look good standing at the edge of the flames. No, here is ego and pride that has nothing of love in it (1Co 13:4-8).

We only grow the fruits of the Spirit by being connected to the Spirit. Otherwise, we are dead branches heaped together which ought not be piled in the church aisles or left at the altar where the anointing of God gives men life again. People come to Christ because He’s calling their names, and the love of God, who He is, is greater than all their messes. We’ve made too much of the work of the devil to destroy and left out how far God will go to save fools like me. Like that Chinese gang member. Or another testimony (below) of a man who thought he’d killed someone for being a Christian, lived with this knowledge for many years. Then met him at a conference years later, as brothers in Christ, and embraced.

Watch this story of redemption.

Let’s truly walk in the Spirit, led of Him, and speak what He has for us, and not what we’ve decided He would say. Let’s seek His face and share His gospel, the good news that “Jesus loves you, this I know, because the Bible tells me so.”


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