The majority of our Christianity is, in folk’s words, “from second hand”. Almost nothing is for us original, received directly from the Lord into our spirit and heart, something that we received from Him after long hours of meditation before Him, after “toiling, sweating and tears” of our soul. After travail and seeking truth and righteousness before the Lord or to­gether with Him. Therefore, whatever we in our Christianity have is “not ne­cessarily our own”, but we obtained it from someone else, somewhere else. We might have obtained it from individuals or in seminaries, theological faculties or by reading piles of books. We ob­tained and believed what others believe and what they also obtained from others. It would not be such a tragic problem if it were a pure truth and pure faith, but what we obtained and believed we NEVER verified whether it was so, whether it agreed with the Scripture, whether the Lord is satisfied with it. We do not even have our own experiences on our own skin. Hence, we might be carrying with us a “suitcase” full of things, which are not ours! When, sometime in the past, I was asked at one airport whether I packed my suit­case myself, I was first surprised until I realized that should it be packed by someone else that person could have packed there a bomb, which could explode at some height and my life and the lives of my fellow travelers were in danger. (Lockerbie!) Precisely this same thing is happening in the spiritual world where the “suitcase” is my soul and there might be stored “spiritual bombs” in it, which threaten not only my life, but also the lives of my fe­llow believers since at some “height”, under some conditions, they might “explode”.

What are those “spiritual bombs”? Every lie, every unrighteousness, every evil, every ini­quity is an individual bomb, which is “ticking” in our soul, which means, it is timed, it (the sin) will one day “explode” (will find us out – Num. 32:23) and we have no idea about it what­so­ever! Well, is this a pleasant situation? And the reason is simple – we have not packed our suitcase ourselves! When Pilate entered the judgment hall and asked Jesus: “Art Thou the King of the Jews?” The Lord Jesus answered him: “Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of Me?” (Jn. 18:33,34). Didn’t the Lord touch here the very CORE of this thing? Even Pilate did not “pack his suitcase”, but received every­thing what others packed into it. And on the basis of those false declarations and lies and accusations and the other filth what the enemies of Christ packed into his suitcase, he did not set Christ free, though he had authority for it and also the moral right, but he extra­dited Christ for crucifixion! Today, the very same thing is happening in the Church! When you ask something someone from a congregation or even from the leadership, he will de­nounce you without blinking his eye and that on the basis of what he heard about you from others without verifying the truth or seeking righteousness! This means, that many of today’s believers together with their leaders are Pilates of the New Testament! Then, why are we surprised that the Church is in such a horrible state? The Lord desires that at least we ourselves would not be Pilates, but would in all circumstances judge righteously and according to the truth (Ps. 15:1-5).

Today’s Christianity brings to the Lord shame, reproach and refusal of His Truth and His Right­eousness. It is a sheer organized “religion”, has no Life of Christ within. Only the Life of Christ can test and verify, what is in our “suitcase”, what is our behavior, morals, speech, appearance, influence upon others, kindness, courtesy, honesty, openness, or the lack of these things and virtues, lack of truth and righteousness, etc. This kind of Life we cannot buy in Christian bookstores, nor in church buildings, this Life cannot be procured in markets for a cheap price or from other vendors, nor is it as a “raincoat”, which we put on only when it rains. This Life is formed, wrought, beaten, worked out, modeled even with fire in the souls of those that have IT. The knowledge of the Lord from “first hand”, from the ORIGINAL, has an unspeakably great value and preciousness. After all, the Lord tells us clearly: “Prove all things” (1Thes. 5:21).

e) All our training, education, teaching, exercise, disciplining, guidance, etc., what comes from the hand of the Lord is of a spiritual nature and takes place on the spiritual field. It is being done for one and the most important purpose – to change us into spiritually living, spiritually effective and spiritually wise believers. This is the only effectiveness which has a value and a purpose with the Lord. We can study from morning to evening, attain to a pile of academic degrees, read a pile of books, we can also work as bees and not have in our soul the Life of Christ and thus no fruit of His Spirit, which means, no oil (Mt. 25:8-12). Only our spiritual effectiveness, walking with God, knowledge of the Lord are the only values which count before God, which bring usefulness, results and fruit… all the rest leads to a spiritual cemetery.

The most precious values in our Christian life are our life’s tests, difficulties, periods of our sufferings, afflictions, anxieties, inabilities, weaknesses, lack of understanding, etc., etc., through which the Lord led us. Where He “ignored” our prayers, requests, desires, where against our will and desire He kept us in wilderness. He did not even give us any job, He “tied us” to either an idleness or to what we did not like or did not want to do at all. He may have also allowed some sickness or injury to “fall on us from the blue”, etc. These are the most precious tests in all our history – had we only known it and understood it! The fact that the Lord in these periods of time had not implemented our plans and visions, “heard not our prayers”, but led us through difficult times of either idleness or too much work, or trials, afflictions, tribulations, whether physical or soulish, has a tremendous sig­nificance, tremendous value! This, however, we absolutely did NOT see and did NOT un­de­r­stand… unless we had already passed through such tests of the Lord before and seen and experienced their spiritual significance, their fruit and effect upon our personality. Therefore, when something befalls us like unpredictable suffering, something unpleasant, unexpected or incomprehensible problems or obstacles on our way, uncommonly burden­some tests of our soul or body, even “hopeless” situations, anything what we would never expect, what we cannot understand – it is necessary to endure, hold on to the trust in the Lord and the faith that HE KNOWS what He is doing, even why He is doing it. We do not know it. HE IS NOT IN OUR HANDS – WE ARE IN HIS HANDS. He has not left us at the mercy of circumstances, but knows about every little thing of our life physical, soulish and spiritual. We will be later on very thankful to Him even for all these things. We will not be impatient, or murmur at the Lord, or have long controversies with Him, or be even angry at Him, or complain to Him: “I sit here, do nothing, my life is passing away under my nose”. In our future we will stop considering these incidents and experiences as of no value, our idleness as wasting of time, nor will we have an attitude: “I will be glad when this is finally behind me”. On the contrary, we will be able to start to see and un­der­stand in our spirit that this is the time for our growing and perfecting of our spirit accord­ing to the Will of God Almighty and in His Way, not according to our will and in our way. THIS IS OUR SALVATION and our way to perfection. This growing and developing of our spirit is the most important thing for our future life, for our future as such and for our ministry to the Lord. We will never have a greater value before the Lord than the measure of our spirituality, our spiritual life and knowledge. And this is also the measure of the Personality of Christ in our person (Eph. 4:13). And these facts stated above are only as it were “matters on the surface”, to the depth we will go later.

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To be continued next week

brother Hanola

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