IN HIS TIME - PART 2

“He came to His own, and his own did not receive Him.” (Jn 1:11-13)
The Jews rejected their Messiah even when all their prophecies and signs pointed unmistakably towards Jesus. Then they unwittingly fulfilled more of those prophecies by crucifying Him.

“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become children of God,
to those who believe in His name:
who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God.”

The new birth must not be misunderstood as merely getting our eternal ticket to heaven.
He wants us to know His time of visitation for us TODAY, His coming to abide, dwell, live and walk together with us, opening up the present treasures of His love to and through us! We are salt and light, called to make a difference HERE NOW.
He taught His disciples to pray and impact their contemporary world, not just some time in the future, but RIGHT NOW in their generation:
“Your kingdom come, Your will be done… in earth as it is in heaven.”
The other way around often seems to be many Christians’ present perspective:
“Take me to heaven soon, because my life is getting dark and unbearable here on earth!”
New birth opens a new, full life of liberty in Our Lord!
We need a fresh revelation of this truth today!

His first disciples heard Jesus call their name, “Follow me!” and that same call continues today for us to ‘deny ourselves, take up our cross,’ (Matt 16:24).
In effect, He is calling us take up our new Identity ‘in Christ’ and follow Him. Timing is ‘crucial’ (variant of its root ‘crux = cross’).
Our response shows whether it’s a walk or just talk.
Sons of God are led by the Spirit. (Rom 8:14)
We must not settle for living below our call.

We cannot afford to neither run off ahead nor lag behind in unbelief.
Both procrastination (putting off God’s timing eg. ‘Later, Dad!’)
and presumption (prematurely acting before God’s timing eg. ‘Look Ma, no hands!’)
distract, throw off balance and ultimately crash in equally devastating ditches.
Both deviate from true Christian liberty and wander in a religious wilderness of ideas, fads and traditions, far removed from our necessary central focus.
We need to be looking unto Jesus, focusing on faithfully knowing and following Him alone.
Our walk with Jesus shows how close and sensitive our relationship truly is: either with Him or not.
I’m not talking theory or theology here, but a plain and simple practical reality:
truth + love in action. Do the math: God = Love. Jesus = God. Ergo… Jesus = Love.
Jesus knew His Identity, who He was, and therefore, He knew the best action to take, especially at His most difficult, crucial times. His Cross revealed God’s love in action to a sin-sick world.

And it’s how close our walk is with Him that will bring us through our crises. The crosses-crises we go through reveal who we truly are, what’s really in us, what we’re made of, just who indeed we are truly following and serving. People can say they follow the Lord, but if their confidence is in signs, they’re still caught up in externals and empty showmanship.
However, God says, “Look at my son/daughter, ___________, (put you name in here).
They have signs following them; they are signs themselves, just like my Old Testament prophets and their children.”

Words are cheap. Actions can cloak deceptive motives. But when sons of God follow Christ in spirit and truth (both wings in His Time), the world has to take notice.

This unshakeable unity in the Lord shakes the very foundations of what seems to be!
It’s revealed sometimes like the awesome power a united army unleashes when it marches together, in time. Such highly trained natural armies even have to break rank when crossing bridges or their synchronized co-ordination can actually cause them to collapse!
Or on the other hand, it can be like the game where the ‘leader’ mischievously falls in step closely behind the ‘follower’ without his knowing, and they walk together, step-in-step, virtually as one body. Our Heavenly Father delights in playfully exchanging places with his children, leading by walking so closely behind us, we don’t even realize He’s there. We begin to learn to lead by simply being led by His Presence!
And still other times, He intimately draws us even more closely to Himself, holding and caressing us, as a Bridegroom dances with His Bride, lifting her up for all the world to see! So Christ’s Church, His body, is rising up and advancing over all the earth!
An army of sons and daughters wedded by the New Covenant in Christ’s Blood! United in His Body and established in His Kingdom! He leads us together in His Spirit, one step at a time, to shake earth’s natural foundations, take ground in men’s hearts, disciple nations, do business, occupy and fill the earth with His glory…as the waters cover the sea!
This is our calling: to walk in His Presence and our destiny in Christ here on earth NOW ...so much more than just waiting till heaven’s ready for us.

Paul learned this walk in the Spirit and knew His leading.
In Acts 16:6-10, he and his apostolic team traveled west from Galatia, intending to preach in Ephesus, the major city of the Roman province of Asia. Big commercial, religious, political centre, important centre of influence, lots of souls for the kingdom: prime place to preach, right?

But the Holy Spirit forbade them! Or was it the devil? Can you tell the difference?

Surely, if someone is hindering the gospel, it must be the devil! Or is it?
Paul was not just trained to not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Gal 5:16 does not equate walking in the Spirit with not fulfilling the lust of the flesh. The second is a result of the first; both are not equal. There is a great deal more to the Christian life than just not sinning (whatever that is). Our identity must be more than negatives or what we don’t do.
I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs…hey, I’m a Christian! Unnnhh! Wrong!
Canadians sometimes reason that same way. We think we are Canadians because we’re not Americans!?! That’s confusing and produces confusion! No wonder our country has gone through such identity crises.
God has not only forgiven us, but we who were former sinners are now saints. We are a new creation with a new Identity and Destiny, sanctified, set apart for His glory! Walking in the Spirit does not result from legalistically trying to not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. These are two entirely different mind-sets.
God has freed us from the works of the flesh by the faith of Jesus Christ and called us to walk in His liberty. He wants us to rejoice in this freedom and let the Holy Spirit break us through into new and future adventures in uncharted territory. It’s neither a matter of how well we can keep the letter-perfect dictates of a spiritualized Christian ‘law’, nor of how close we can come to sin without ‘losing our salvation’. It has everything to do with drawing closer day by day to Jesus and letting Him lead us in victory through the enemy’s snares and distractions in this world!

Paul didn’t just receive a preaching-healing gift to justify whatever else he wanted to do ‘in Jesus’ Name’. He had the call to live Christ, follow Christ and preach Christ wherever the Spirit led him. Not just preach and ‘do the stuff’. He was not primarily a preaching machine.
Preaching and other ‘spiritual gifts’ can even be motivated by people-pleasing pride, producing nothing other than lust of the flesh! Ask any honest preacher.
No! Paul was being trained to walk in the Spirit and know His Lord’s leading, yielding to the subtle sensitive tugs on His heart, not just following circumstantial signs.
The Holy Spirit said ‘No!’ to Asia.
At that time it was not His Time.

Paul turned north to Mysia + Bithynia. Surely this was the Lord’s direction!?
But again, “The Spirit did not permit them.”
A lesser man, led by his own feelings, would have been discouraged and turned back to Antioch, questioning whether God had ever really called him to preach in the first place. But Paul was not such a man: he and his team were not easily stopped. Going back was not an option.
Neither to the left nor right? Sounds like Moses at the Red Sea, eh?
So they went straight ahead …to Troas (Troy) and that’s where Paul had his Macedonian vision and clearly “concluded the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.”
Paul had felt to go to Ephesus: big city, big vision, big exposure?
But God had a bigger vision than Paul!
Paul saw only a city, but God saw Europe, a whole new continent!
Eventually, after 2 years and churches successfully established in Philippi, Thessalonica and Corinth, Paul made it to Ephesus. He later spent 3 years there and evangelized the entire area.
If Paul had only been led by his gifting, and went to Ephesus according to how he might have ‘success’, he might have had good meetings, but missed out on God’s Best.
In His time.
True sons know their Identity to walk in the Spirit + fulfill their Destiny.