Point of Entry

Have you ever traveled past a large gated property?  Long before you see the dwelling, you can begin to tell the property’s condition by looking at the gate. The gate serves as the point of entry in the boundary that has been laid around the property.   Some gates are shiny and new; others are worn and faded but still functioning.  If the gate is intact, chances are the property is intact.  It’s not an absolute guarantee; however, when a property’s gate is latched and functioning, generally the dwelling and property are in working order as well.  The gate is the first thing you encounter before coming to someone’s home.  It is serves as a measure of protection but also a form of welcome.  It can be a warm welcome or a cold one.  The gate is the place you start any relationship you are going to have with this property.

In Nehemiah 3, we come to the devastated city of Jerusalem.  Jerusalem was the center of the Israelites’ spiritual lives.  Its heartbeat was in the Temple where God met with his people.   The wall around Jerusalem had been destroyed by war and neglect.  The gates no longer functioned to protect or welcome anyone to the city.  They were in disrepair.   As the Israelites began to rebuild the wall, they first had to repair and install the gates.

The gates are important to the city for a number of reasons.  First, they are a point of entry.  They prepare you for what you will encounter as you enter.  Will you find strength and health as you enter the city?  Or will there be apathy and disrepair?  The gate is also the gathering place for community.  The judges sat at the city gate to hear cases and decide on critical issues for the people.  The gates provide safety.  When the gates are intact and shut; no unwanted outsiders can enter the city.  The inhabitants enjoy security and peace.

Most of us do not own large gated properties.  We do however inhabit large spiritual properties.  These are guarded by the boundaries we set in our minds.  Our mind serves as a gate to protect our spirit and body.  What we allow in our thinking directly affects our spiritual and physical lives.  Many of us have walls and gates in disrepair.  Our boundaries are not in working order due to trauma, abuse, neglect, or poor choices.  We’ve been battered by the enemy in some shape or form and we’ve not returned to repair our boundaries.  The enemy seeks entrance to disrupt and harass us.  We no longer have judges sitting at our gates discerning and making wise decisions on our behalf.   We no longer welcome others into our lives.  We live in fear and insecurity.  Who can feel secure when the enemy roams around wreaking havoc in our lives?

We must rebuild the gates.  We must yield our minds to the Spirit of Christ and allow him to come and repair the damage.  Yielding to Christ is a choice we make.  It can start as simply as praying, “Christ, I yield my spirit to you.  Please heal my mind and restore my spirit and body to you.”  He always answers this prayer.  You can be assured of that.  It is his desire that the gates to our spiritual lives are in working order to welcome Him and to protect us from the enemy.  Once we are yielded to His presence, we maintain the working order of our gates by choosing carefully what we allow in.  “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ…” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Heading to church once a week to refuel is a great start but in reality; maintaining a strong, healthy mind and spirit takes daily, hourly, sometimes minute by minute maintenance. It requires regular renewal through the scriptures.  We open our gates to his presence and his Spirit but we must learn to carefully discern and shut everything else out.  While the work is done by his Spirit; we must make the choices throughout the day to welcome his love and to shut out all the doubts, irritations, lies, and confusion that the enemy wants to sneak in.  We rebuild and maintain the gates to our spiritual property each day by submitting to God’s loving presence and yielding our hearts completely to Him.

How to be incredibly strong

“For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians

You will likely never find a best-selling book with the title, “How to be weak!” or “5 Steps to Being Weaker” or “Weakness for Dummies.”  Very few would buy such books because, frankly, few Americans (that I know) are interested in weakness.  Are you?  It’s not at all what we are raised to aspire to. Just walk around your local bookstore in the self-help section and you’ll find lots of books about strength (inner, physical, and social), power, getting ahead in life, self-confidence, and self-exaltation.  And yet the greatest apostle, Paul, the writer of the majority of the New Testament said, “I will not boast, except of my weaknesses,” (verse 5).  This seems so counter-intuitive to us, doesn’t it?

And yet, the path to being incredibly strong spiritually is through weakness.  It’s not that weakness is good in itself.  No, things like, “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities,” (verse 10) are often the result of other people’s sin toward us.  These things are often evil so it’s not that we are to aspire to them, or hope for them, or even want them. (Paul didn’t –He said, “I prayed three times for him to take it away!”). However, it is in the midst of these situations that two things happen.

First, we learn to rely, not on ourselves and our natural abilities, but on Christ who gives us his strength.  It is when I come to the end of me and what I can accomplish or figure out that I discover the surpassing greatness of Jesus.  It is when I am unable and unfit that I experience his grace and power (verse 9). It is when I am at the end of my rope that I discover He has me in the palm of his hand.  It is when I do not have the power to deliver or heal or preach that I experience his Spirit working through me to accomplish the things that I in my own strength could never do.  You see, that’s when the supernatural becomes natural. That’s when Christ’s power rests upon me (verse 9).  That’s when the Holy Spirit operates most freely through me.

Second, we become like Jesus. God actually uses hardship to shape within us the image of his Son.  He conforms us to the image of Christ through the difficulties we face. You see,  I would never know the godly quality of forgiveness if I did not have to learn to forgive others like Christ does.  I would not know what it is to love as God does, unless I have to deal with the unlovely.  I would never understand the heart beat of the Father unless I have to deal with ungrateful and discontented people. I would never know the compassion of Jesus without facing the reality of fidgety, fickle and fearful folks around me.  And I wouldn’t know patience without having to be patient.  Hardship allows the Holy Spirit to shape and mold us and to imprint within our spirit’s the nature and reality of Jesus.

So, to be incredibly strong you have to seek Christ in the midst of your hardships and weakness.  Instead of avoiding them or numbing them or seeking to quickly fix or hide them, why get still before the Lord and ask him how he is using them in your life.  You might just discover that, “when you weak, then you are strong.”

 

Suffering and Comfort

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. We share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5)

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians begins with the theme of “comfort” (see verses 3-5 above). The letter closes with the theme of “comfort”: “Finally, brothers, good-by. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you,” (13:11).  In the middle we find the reason for  comfort: “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work,” (9:8). The Source of this comfort is: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” (12:9).

Paul begins his letter by referencing a time of grave suffering he recently experienced in Asia (4-11). Whether that suffering was due to illness, or persecution isn’t entirely clear. What is clear is that it was a time in which, “we despaired of life itself.” While scholars are divided, more than likely Paul is referencing his escape from Ephesus following intense upheaval there led by Demetrius the silversmith and the followers of the Artemis cult (see Acts 21:19-41). This riotous opposition came after several years of effective Gospel ministry in that area and resulted in Paul and his friends have to flee for their lives.  However, having faced this intense suffering Paul says, “It made us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead,” (v 9).

While Paul’s ministry was a victorious ministry, it was also filled with suffering.  Warfare always is full of illustrations of triumph through suffering because victory always has a cost.  While the Christian life is a victorious life because of the great cost paid through the cross of Jesus and the great power given by the Holy Spirit, it is also filled with trials and tribulations. Make no mistake, you will suffer in this life as a Christian! Jesus told Paul this in Acts  9:16 — “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”  Likewise Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world,” (John 16:33). Why the sufferings? Because the world hates Jesus Christ. The world has rejected his light and so when that light shines through you, some will receive it gladly and unto salvation, while others will reject it and persecute you for bearing that light (see John 3:17-19). But from God’s perspective, the suffering  has purpose. (REMEMBER, he is not the source of your suffering!!!!) But suffering, persecution, and weakness do cause us to rely upon him and his power. And in that he receives great glory. And it also allows us to receive his comfort — not as an end in itself, but so that we may then turn around and give comfort to others with the same comfort we have received from God.

 

Weak Things

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” (1 Corinthians 26-29)

God delights in using weak things to accomplish his purposes. In Judges 6-8 we will see the story of Gideon unfold. According to Gideon’s own words when the angel declared that he would be the deliverer of Israel, “Lord, how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my father’s house.” Gideon was a man filled with fear who had no clue how to conquer the formidable obstacles before him. The Lord’s answer to him was simply, “But I will be with you.”  God did not tell Gideon at the outset how he would overcome, he simply reassured Gideon that it would be so. Not because of Gideon’s abilities but because of God’s presence. Remember in whatever you face today and in the days ahead, that God plus one person is always a majority.