2017.08.27_Believe in the Lord Jesus

Do Not Write Your Own Fiction

God is spirit. That is why no one can see God. The prophets in the Old Testament partially knew and declared the will of God, but they had never seen God. Only the begotten son of God has ever seen Him. (John 1:18) Therefore no one can know about God unless the Son reveals Him.

Many Christians experience confusion in their spiritual lives as if they are wandering in the darkness. That is because God is invisible to their eyes! In this situation we must remember the words of Jesus when He said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.” (John 14:1) Jesus came to the world as a man. He was born of a woman just like other men, ate food just like a man, grew, experienced sadness, and He eventually died and was carried into the tomb. It is a great misunderstanding to think that His life was completely different from other men just because He is the Son of God.

We can be one with Jesus because He is a man. This kind of unity is not possible between man and beast. How can beasts share their thoughts, knowledge, and emotions with men? But Jesus became a man in order to share everything with us. Our faith does not consist of speculating about the invisible God, but in knowing and serving God the Father through Jesus who came into the world as a man.

In conversations we sometimes say, “What you are saying has no basis in fact, it is complete fiction.” Fiction is a type of literature that is imagined or fabricated, like novels or fantasies. While the narrative might seem real, it is not reality. The characters in a novel are not real characters but imaginary beings from the mind of the writer. The problem is that many believers are writing their own novels about God in regard to their spiritual lives! They confess they believe in God, but their ‘God’ is just a god conceived from their imagination and philosophical worldview. The spiritual lives of those people appear godly on the surface, but they are just fiction.

The reason we should listen carefully to Jesus’ words is because He said, “Trust in God; trust also in me!” If you want an accurate picture of God, you must believe that Jesus is equal with God who is the invisible Spirit. While Jesus was here on the earth during the course of His life, He was not behaving like an invisible spirit, but as a man made of flesh. He went through all the experiences of a man, from birth to burial after He died. In order to know God we must go through the man Jesus rather than discovering our own God like a blind man wandering in the darkness.

Even after God raised Jesus from the dead, He retained His fleshly body and remained a man. His body did not grow larger when He entered heaven after His resurrection. He was resurrected with the same body that had been killed, entered heaven with the same body, and will come again with that body! You must not magnify the image of Jesus beyond the limits of truth just to emphasize that He is the son of God. Those who embellish the persona and image of Jesus can more readily have their faith shattered by circumstances. Some people routinely embellish their spiritual experiences saying such things as, “God responded to me in this manner when I prayed.” They should be more careful in this regard.

The Kingdom and the Power and the Glory Given Us In His Name

John 17:11-12 says, “I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given me, that they may be one as We are one. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave me I have kept. None of them is lost except the son of perdition that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”John chapter 17 contains Jesus’ prayer of intercession to God the Father, and verse 11 and 12 summarized the whole point of the Old Testament prophesies.

Many people misunderstand the phrase, “That they may be one as We are one” to mean, “let them not be in conflict with one another, but cause them to have a good relationship like we do.” It is natural for men without inspiration to think that way. However, in order to properly understand this passage, you must first understand the relationship between God the Father and the Son. God the Father is greater than heaven, but the Son came into the world as a man. How can He who is greater than heaven be one with a man?

Jesus said, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever!” (Matthew 6:13) The kingdom and the power and the glory all inherently belong to God the Father. But the Father gave them all to His Son. Matthew 28:18 says, “Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”An example of that would be when a country gives a person presidential authority He or she has the legitimate right to exercise that authority and to govern from that moment. Likewise, God the Father gave the kingdom and all the power and the glory to His Son, thereby giving Him the authority to govern all things.

The Son also has given them all to His saints who believe and follow Him. Matthew 28:19 says, “Therefore go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” All the authority that God the Father gave to His Son, including the authority to forgive sins has been given to those who are united with Him. Romans 8:17 says, “Now if we are children, then we are heirs; heirs of God and join theirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may share in His glory.”

Today we can cast out demons because of the kingdom and the power and the glory in us. Matthew 12:28 says, “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” The devil and the spirits who belong to him submit to us because our authority is greater than his. All of the power of hell cannot overcome the church because it is under the authority that comes from heaven. (Matthew 16:18)

Ask In His Name

John 14:12-14 says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I do and even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” This promise is not a fairy tale but a promise from the living God. If we are one with Him just as God the Father and the Son are one, we will do the things that Jesus did and even greater things than those.

We must pay particular attention in this passage to the phrase, “That the Father may be glorified in the Son.” In whatever we pray for we must ask ourselves if it brings glory to our heavenly Father. But sadly, many people regard God as their servant, saying things like, “God, why don’t you give me this? Why don’t you do that for me?” That is like saying, “God, answer me. Give me what I want. Satisfy my desires.” That is an attempt to control God. That is why many people do not get answers when they pray even though they may pray a lot.

We must clearly understand who should learn from whom and who should resemble whom. Jesus said, “Come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”(Matthew 11:29) When two cattle are yoked together, the two must be in harmony, otherwise they hinder each other. The saints likewise must learn from Jesus rather than act contrary to what He has taught us and the example He set. The word ‘saint’ means a student who has been set apart, or ‘holy’, and so we must constantly learn from Jesus until we meet Him at His return. Jesus said, “The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”(John 14:26), We must learn Jesus by the Holy Spirit.

When we ask anything in the name of Jesus, God the Father receives glory.(John 14:13) The name of Jesus is the name of life in us. When the disciples entered the temple gate, they encountered a crippled beggar. Then Peter, fixing his eyes on him said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have, I give you: in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” (Acts 3:6) The only thing that we can say we have is life. Everything else comes and goes in our lifetime but the one thing we have from the beginning to the end is life. The words “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End”, can be understood in the context of the span of a man’s life, Jesus’ in this case, as, ‘I am the life.’ The only thing we can say to possess is the life that we have from the beginning to the end, and the name of the life we have is Jesus.

Therefore, ‘praying in Jesus’ name’ is like ‘praying with life’. Our prayer to God must always be with life. If you see someone with a nice watch, become envious, and ask God to give you a luxury watch also, that is not a prayer that gives life. Will God answer such prayers?

There are many Christians who maintain their spiritual lives on the basis of their faith without ever having any of their prayers answered. Who can say that their faith is not a fantasy? Why do they even pray if they do not expect an answer? James 4:3 says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, to spend it on your passions.” On the other hand, those who know God’s will have confidence when they pray. 1John 5:14-15 says, “This is the confidence we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the request that we have asked of Him.”

Praying in the name of Jesus does not mean just saying, “In Jesus’ name” at the end of our prayers. Jesus’ name is everything to us. It is all we have, our very life. We should value our prayers to God as much as we value our life. When we pray in that way, the Holy Spirit will testify that we have the name of Jesus in us. When God the Father receives glory by our prayer, as if we are offering our life to Him when we pray, Jesus will do what we ask.