Reasons For A Faulty Perception Of God
O God, we often fall into the trap of assuming we are right with Thee when the reality is, we are far from Thee. Stir up our hearts that we will not be content with where we are or what we have, but that our contentment will be focused only on thee. Amen.
Our perception of God is so crucial that great pains must be taken to make sure it is deeply rooted in the foundation of God’s Word. It is quite easy to get sidetracked and try to update God’s Word.
Several things need to be dealt with if we are going to keep our perception of God where it needs to be. There are certain things that we do that are detrimental to our spiritual progress. Let me outline a few of die mistakes we make that hinder our progress.
I think the first mistake is assuming that because it is in the Bible, it is in us.
Read and Learn More Things That Delight The Heart Of God
Someone in a prayer meeting gets up and gives a testimony: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
Because he quotes Scripture and believes in the Scriptures, he assumes that what the Scripture says is a reality in his own life. But the man who gives this kind of testimony may not have much in his life that really supports and substantiates this testi¬mony. Because you believe it does not mean it is a reality in your life. We assume that if it is in the Bible, it is in us.
For myself, if it is not in the Bible, I do not want it in me. It can, however, be in the Bible and never get in me at all. Because our Bible teachers often lead us down this road, we assume that if we read it in the Bible, it is in us, whether or not we have appropriated it.
It will not take five minutes in the actual presence of the Lord Jesus Christ to bring tears to our eyes when we realize what we missed while here on earth. We will see how we were betrayed by those who pretended to be teaching us but left us hanging high and dry.
The Lord meant that we should be the happiest, fullest, most overflowing people in the world.
We can have everything the Bible tells us we can have, but we cannot assume that we have it because the Bible says it. We must come to the point of personally experiencing everything that the Bible is teaching us.
Knowing the first step is important, but it is only the first step, and we must persevere unto perfection; that is, experiencing what God wants us to experience in the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Another mistake that hinders our perception of God is just plain spiritual laziness. That sounds harsh, but I have seen it all around, even in my own life. Physical laziness is one thing, but spiritual laziness is something we never really deal with in our lives.
We can make ourselves do physical exercise to compensate for physical laziness, but it is almost impossible to make ourselves do some intellectual exercise. The average church today is geared to the level of a home for backward children.
The pastor does not dare rise into high theology, because his poor backward sheep cannot follow him. It is hard to get people to think, but it is harder still to get them to thirst.
We can encourage people to exercise physically, and they will see immediate results if they work hard enough. And we can get a few to exercise intellectually. But when it comes to making people spiritually thirsty, it takes the Holy Spirit to do that.
I have discovered that the frustrating aspect of preaching and teaching is that the preacher and teacher cannot do the work of change for people. It must be a work of the Holy Spirit within the heart of the believer. I can encourage people to read books, but I cannot talk people into a hunger and thirst for the things of God. It takes the Holy Spirit to do that.
Another mistake that hinders and compromises our perception of God is our love of the world. By this, I mean that we accept the prevailing standard in the world to be “normal.”
Say a child is born in a sanitarium for tuberculosis patients. It sounds ridiculous but bear with me. That child is born there, lives there, grows up there, and accepts the situation he is in as normal—he does not know any better.
Everyone has a cough, everyone holds his chest, everyone carries a little bag to spit in, and everyone has to take five naps a day and live on a special diet. If you are brought up in that environment, you think it is normal and you adjust your whole life to that normality.
So it is possible to be brought up in a church today, accept the low, weak, anemic, worn-out type of Christianity there, believe it is New Testament Christianity, and expect nothing better—that there’s nothing more to look for.
When the world is our model for normality, we become adjusted to the rid V standards. When we become adjusted to the ‘world’s standards, we are at odds with the Word’s standards. Everything seems normal, and nobody suspects that there is something more to be grasped as far as the Christian life is concerned.
Remember, it is the Holy Spirit who commands us to press on to perfection. This is a matter of daily spiritual discipline. I think another mistake we make that really affects our perception of God is our overall eagerness to be consoled, no matter what. Do we come to a point in the church where consolation is our God?
Some go to church looking for consolation. We are encouraged to go to church to find peace and consolation. But the church is not a place to find consolation; it is a place to hear the gospel preached so you can find salvation.
A big difference exists between being consoled and being saved. A man can find consolation and end up finally in hell. A man can be under blistering, terrifying conviction, get converted, and go finally to heaven.
We demand that our preachers console us all the time. We want to be consoled and comforted as though we were little boys and girls. Personally, I want to know the worst about myself now so I can do something about it while there is still time. If I do not know what is wrong, I will never be able to correct it, which will have an adverse effect on my life.
Another drastic mistake, which I will touch on later in this book, is an unwillingness to die in the flesh.
I wrote some articles for a Christian magazine on the subject of the Holy Spirit. The theme of those articles had to do with our deeper life and our relationship with the Holy Spirit. This series of articles created two reactions, different from night to day.
The series consisted of four articles, and when the last of the articles was published, I received a very long letter from a well-known Bible expositor. In that letter, he said that after he read my article, he was distressed because he felt I was leading people astray.
Did I not know, he said, that everyone who was a believer had the Holy Spirit, and did I not know that the command to be filled with the Spirit was not something ever intended for us to obey, but rather an ideal set before us?
It was only something to keep us moving, but the idea that God should ever fill anybody with the Holy Spirit just could not be. He included some other items in that letter.
I laid the letter aside and never replied to it. You cannot change the thinking of some people. Then I received another letter from the same person informing me that he had been disappointed in not getting a reply. “I want a reply,” he demanded.
So I replied:
Dear brother, I did not mean to be discourteous in not replying to your letter, but there are some things too scared to expose to the unsympathetic gaze of a man who believes as you do.
Second, I hope you will not think me uncharitable if I say that if God’s people were as eager to be filled with the Holy Spirit as they are to prove that you cannot be, the church might come out of her doldrums.
He wrote again with a copy of my letter enclosed and said he was sending this letter and one of his own to the editor of the magazine, demanding equal space to answer me. He just was not going to let it alone, that anybody could be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Letters like that can be depressing, but then I got another letter from the editor of that magazine.
He was riding the train out of Chicago and happened to sit beside a fine-looking young fellow, perhaps in his late twenties, and he got into a conversation. After introductions, the young man said, “I have heard about that magazine.” They discussed many things and finally got around to discussing the articles I had written on the Holy Spirit.
“I have been reading those articles on the deeper life,” he said, “and I do not know, but I am just sick. I do not think I am even converted. It is awful. I have suffered, and I have gone through so much, and I just do not know. I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is an awful state that I am in.”
My friend arrived at his station and got off, so they parted ways. Some months went by and they met again on the train, and the young man remembered my friend. This time my friend noticed that the gloom was all gone. The young man’s face was shining like the morning sun after the rain.
After their introductory greeting, my friend said, “The last time I saw you, you had a long face. You were in misery.”
“Yes,” he said, “but do you know what? God met me. God met me! Now I want to tell you about something. I want you to pray for me; I have a decision to make. I was just in Europe under the auspices of the World Council of Churches, and I saw the poor sheep looking so poorly.
I gave a speech at this great convention, and I was bubbling over with God. I do not know why I said it, but I closed my speech by saying, ‘Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?’ I sat down and some old preachers came around and said, ‘Young fellow, thank God you dared to say that. We believe it but are afraid to say it.’”
Then he said to my friend, “I want you to pray for me. I have to make up my mind whether I can stay in that denomination any longer or not.”
Two people, the same series of articles on the Holy Spirit, and two completely different responses. One man was red-hot and determined to prove that you cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Another man, out of a dead denomination, got so blistering hot under conviction that he found God without anyone to help him and dared to shock the gathering of the World Council of Churches.
This is the difference between a hungry man and one who is satisfied. Now, the question that I must ask, not only of myself, but of you as a reader is this: Are you satisfied, or are you hungry?
The answer to that one question will point you in one direction or another. And the answer to that question and the follow-through of that question will greatly determine your perception of God.
If you are hungry enough to do something about it, you will have climbed high on the mountain of God. If you are satisfied, you will be the same mediocre weakling that you are right now. It is just a question of how badly you want to know God.
Thy Way, Not Mine, O Lord
Thy way; not mine, O Lord
However dark it be!
Lead me by Thine own hand,
Choose the path for me.
Smooth let it be or rough,
It will be still the best;
Winding or straight, it matters not,
Right onward to Thy rest.
I dare not choose my lot;
I would not, if I might;
Choose Thou for me, my God;
So I shall walk aright.
The kingdom that I seek
Is Thine: so let the way
That leads to it being Thine,
Otherwise, I must surely stray.
Take Thou my cup, and it
With joy or sorrow fill,
As best to Thee may seem;
Choose Thou my good and ill.
Choose Thou for me, my friends,
My sickness or my health;
Choose Thou my cares for me,
My poverty or wealth.
Not mine, not mine the choice In things both great or small;
Be Thou my guide, my strength,
My wisdom, and my all. –Horatius Bonar (1808-1889)