Good Feelings or God's Glory? - Part 2

As I said last time, it is a good thing, but also a sobering thing to see God's glory through His people. It brings with it a real responsibility. This time, I want to discuss what happens when a group of people seek God for the purpose of knowing Him and showing His glory.

I've been reading a book about the subject by John Bevere entitled The Fear of the Lord:Discover the Key to Intimately Knowing God. He says, and I agree, that when we seek to know Him as a group and as individuals, He will come and show His glory to and through us. But He also says when that happens things get more serious.

Before we can talk about the results of God showing His glory, we need to talk about order. When God first made man in the garden of Eden, He made them male and female. They were the crown of His creation. All other creatures were given coverings, but man and woman were covered with God's glory so they didn't need any covering at first. God made order in creation, then brought His glory. When Adam and Eve sinned, however what was the first thing that happened? God's glory departed and they knew they were naked and tried to make their own coverings. God would have none of that though, and He made them coverings that foreshadowed the cross.

In Jesus, God made people right with Himself again and if we receive Him we are given power to become sons and daughters of God. We become the temple of the Holy Spirit. That is what brings His glory to us, because He came to remind us of all Jesus wants us to know. As we seek Him and grow, God's glory begins to shine in our lives.

Now we're ready to discuss what happens when a group of people, the Body of Christ, show God's glory. Let's go to the book of Acts. The church began to grow by leaps and bounds, but when God's glory came, those who showed disrespect, this time by lying were immediately judged (see Acts 5:1-11). Scripture says they lied not to men, but to the Holy Spirit. A group of people cannot live close to God's glory and just do what they want. It is one thing to know of God, but when He is among us in His glory, what will keep us safe is the love of God with the fear of the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is not the same thing as being afraid of God. Fear of the Lord means respect for God and His ways, and wanting to please Him in everything. We will still be human and sin at times, but we will not want to or like it that we do. The Bible says fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps 111:10) and knowledge (Proverbs). It says His secret is with those who fear Him (Ps 25:14), and that He has laid up great goodness for those who fear Him (Ps 31:19).

There is much more to be said about this subject, but this is a start. I believe God is working to get us ready as the Body of Christ not just as individuals to show forth His glory, and in doing so He wants us walking in both love and fear of the Lord so we will not be destroyed by seeing that glory. I pray God plant the truths about the fear of the Lord deep within our hearts so we can show His glory to a world that desperately needs it.

Good Feelings or God's Glory? - Part 1

I am so glad I have been able to soak in Father's love as of late. That is what makes it possible for me to come boldly before Him again. But I have to do more than soak in His love. If I don't want more from Him than to feel better about life and myself I am not seeing Him clearly. As I continue to know Him better, I will feel better, but if that is my main goal I am missing it.

I have to do what Hos 6:3 (NKJV) says: Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth. He redeemed me as part of a people He has made to show forth who He is. It is my job to let Him make me more like Himself every day, and for that to happen, I need to seek to know Him. I cannot change myself into who He wants me to be, but I need to allow Him to do that in me.

On Sunday morning right now we are having a before-service class on John 17. One of the things we are trying to understand is God's glory. It is very important to understand what that means, in part because of Rom 8:29-30. The NLT says, 29 For God knew His people in advance, and He chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And having chosen them, he called them to come to Him. And having called them, He gave them right standing with Himself. And having given them right standing, He gave them His glory.

I am meant, once I come into right-standing with God through Jesus to be the same kind of person He was so others will know Him. If I just tell others about Him that does not show His glory, but if I live in His ways from my heart, that does show who He is, or show His glory. I can only do that by knowing Him, and that only comes as I seek Him.

The good thing is that He says if I do seek to know Him, He will come. When the body of Christ seeks Him as the Body and not just as individuals, He says He will fill us with His glory. That is a very good and a very sobering thing. I want to be like Him as much as possible personally, but I also want to see us like Him as the Body. The next time I will talk more about that. In the meantime, God bless you as you seek to know Him even more.

Let Us Pray

Since January, our pastor has taught at least five messages on prayer. This is a very important subject. Corporate prayer is a vital part of our lives. If we don't do it we will pay the cost, and there is a cost. We will end up at best with lackluster programs that have form but no life. At worst, we will see works that could have grown strong dissolve. I have seen both happen.

Today prayer in churches often consists of an email prayer chain and maybe a small women's prayer group. That is important, but it isn't enough if we want God to move in power in our midst. Corporate prayer can grow both in content and numbers, but only if it is started. God doesn't expect it to be full-grown at the beginning, but it will never get there if churches don't start somewhere.

To be honest, I am having a hard time writing this, because it is very hard since the stroke for me to speak, much less pray out loud. But I still need to write the truth, and I believe God will help me grow back into it in His time. I also believe He will help any work, whether it be church or outreach get there if it wants to. I would like to trust Him with that possibilty this year. He is faithful--are we?

Church Alive!

As I've looked over my past work I have realized something. The church I started going to this winter really does what I write about in my articles about the body of Christ. They have the right attitudes, are listening to God, learning how to study the Bible, working on getting healed and being more and more a community of faith. They have outreaches to the poor and are serious about God.

I thought that would make us ready for what is ahead. It is making us ready, but it doesn't look like I envisioned it would. That's okay--we still have a little more work to go. But I don't think it will ever look like I think it will. God always has something different and deeper in mind than I do, and if it goes according to His plan as opposed to mine, it will be great.

Now not everyone in this church is in the same place spiritually. That's true in all churches. If we were all at the same maturity level, it wouldn't be good. We will be at different places of growth. But we all need to be growing. Right now we are being challenged not to come to church if we don't enjoy it--we shouldn't come out of duty. We are also being challenged to come early enough to get in on the beginning of worship because God deserves our all. It has also been suggested that our worship start before we come so we are ready to present ourselves corporately before our God. God is raising the bar, and what He is saying can be done by people at different levels of maturity.

My entrance into things at this church is from a different angle. I can only participate so much since I can't sing well since the stroke and I haven't been able to talk much. But even in my condition I've found the worship really helps me draw nearer to God and I am beginning to be able to open slowly back up to Him. I am finding my hands raise a little higher each meeting, especially since a friend told me God really had missed my worship. I also just started going to a before church Bible study yesterday. It really surprised me because of its depth--and the desire for it to remain very practical. Also I've started getting some healing for things God has shown me during this stroke--things that were there before, but that I was busy enough to ignore.

Their desire at this church is for people to participate in worship, service, community or any aspect of things because they want to. They do not believe in abusing the people who come. I believe God will honor this kind of church and that the rest of what is needed will be added unto us as we keep looking at Him.

I pray Father, that this church keep growing according to your plan, and that we become all that You want us to be. I also pray for those who aren't in a church with these characteristics and want to be that You help them find one. I love you, Lord. In Jesus' name and for His sake I pray. Amen

Reviewing the Past

Today I want to talk about the past. One way I'll get to the future is by looking at where I've been. I have been rereading my blog articles lately, and know that where I am today is partly seen in what I've been writing about. I am being tested as to whether I believe what I feel God inspired me to write.

I found myself saying a loud resounding "yes" to these articles again. After all, they are as much for me as for anyone else. I do believe the right kind of wasted worship is the only way for me to go. I do believe what I said in the articles on God saying, "I Will Build My Church." I believe the things I wrote in "Hearing God's Voice--What's Stopping Me?" and all the other articles. Even the articles that I don't believe were specifically inspired I believe.

That is integrity. If I didn't still believe these things, I would need to remove them. Now though, I need to see how they apply after the stroke. I have also written some other things on a web page, things I need to go over. I wrote about an auto accident in 1983 and how it affected my life. I needed to go back there because it speaks of what I can learn during severe physical trials. You can find it at http://www.geocities.com/skywatch5/1983mystory.html if you want to read it. Just copy the address and paste it in the window and go. That and some poems are found in the section called "Suffering's Challenge." It also helped me to go to the poems and read "Wonderings" and "Learning to Yield."

The other night in the middle of the night, God was there when I woke up. I've been thinking a lot about my future in the last couple weeks especially. I feel like He just showed me an attitude that needs to change. He showed me how I thought about something that I have always gotten around through ignoring it. Now I'm hearing Him say I have to get to the bottom of it. It's time to confess and forsake it. I'm hearing that as I do, my future can be better than my past.

As I look ahead, I am also being told to look at my giftings and ask how they can be used to best advantage. You see, another thing I believe is that work-wise we should do what we were made for. I have not been doing that. I have been working where I have because that's what God gave me to do for those seasons, but I feel now is the time to really examine this area since I can't do much right now. I am asking where God wants to take me and how He wants to get me there.

All of this is one way of saying what a serious crisis can do for and in your life. I know I am going to learn a lot more in the days to come as I keep asking, seeking and knocking. Feel free to come along.

Tests and Trials - Part 2

The stroke I had last summer has touched many areas of my life. I was so out of it that it took a friend of mine to point this out to me. It has touched my physical health, my emotional health, my financial health and my spiritual health.

As I said last time, I lost my job. I am getting ready to consider what I can be trained to do now. My thoughts were not clear in the beginning, but I am now gaining clarity and can hold my thoughts for a while. However, with my speech still in flux and so much trouble typing, things are hard. (One thing I thought I heard even before the stroke was the Lord saying the enemy was going to try to take my voice. I didn't know that was literal.) Also, learning is not as quick as it was. We will see what happens--and did I mention there seems to be a dearth of jobs right now?

This is also a financial battle for me. When I was working for A Hearing Service and Omega Retirement Plans during the last seven years, I saved as much money as I could. I had never had a chance to save before and now I was doing it. Even though I have a gift for saving, I could only save so much, and couldn't save enough. The hospital wrote off my bill, which I could not have paid, and some of the doctors did as well. Other bills were scaled down. I had thought I was saving for retirement... . I have had to go on disability for now. It started six months after the stroke. I also was able to get on the Healthy Indiana Program which helps when you have no health insurance. (I have never had a job with health insurance.) Right now I need these things, and I am grateful, though I would like to get past this. I really don't want to be tied to the system for healthcare and provision.

I'm having an emotional battle because I feel useless with no quick turnaround in sight. I felt depressed for months, but that has lifted a little as I've started reading counseling books and writing on here and Facebook, and have started praying and listening to God a little more. It helps some when I'm listening even if He isn't talking.

The spiritual battle is to totally yield to God in this situation. It's hard to yield when you are angry and have many questions. Another part of my spiritual battle involves some things I said yes to the Lord about a year ago January. It seems that those things have completely evaporated. I wonder what my future holds, what I can do for the next stage of my life. I believe God still has something for me or I wouldn't be thinking He might but it's a challenge just waiting.

I am working on what it means to trust God again when I have nothing I am doing for Him or for myself. I don't feel very capable right now, but He says His love is not based on my worthiness. I am getting another lesson in being loved by my Father, and will let you know more as I learn.

Tests and Trials - Part 1

Hi, everyone. It has been over a year since I have written, though several things are in draft form. I had thought to write more, but life has a way of intruding. I got in touch with a group of people from the past last spring, and talked with them for a few months. That took all my energy and didn't turn out as I'd hoped. It was worth trying, however.

Then I went from the frying pan into the fire. On July 29, 2008, five days after my 57th birthday, I had a stroke. It was in the top left side of the brain, and because it was in a somewhat unusual place some of the things I'm having to recover from are unusual also.

At first I was emotionally numb, and then I got very angry at God. This wasn't supposed to happen. One of the fears I've had for some time was that since I was divorced in December 2004, I wondered what would happen to me if I was alone and something happened. I kept fighting the fear, but it still stayed. Well I was alone and something did happen, yet I survived. I was in the hospital for five days, then went to the home of some friends who used to go to the church I went to. I stayed with them for six weeks--long enough to get stabilized and to start dealing with the high blood pressure I'd been trying to deal with naturally for years and diabetes I also learned of in the hospital. (Diabetes is now being totally controlled by diet.) I was there also long enough to begin to deal with the stroke's effects.

I didn't know it can take up to two years for a person to recover as much as possible from a stroke. It has been almost seven and a half months now. For all this time I have been working to go from not being able to speak to where my speech therapist says I have "voicing" with the proper pitch for my voice 65% of the time. At times I still speak in a whispery, hoarse voice. When I do speak, my words are usually very clear, however I speak. As far as singing goes, I never had a great voice, but it is much worse now.

Other areas I'm dealing with include typing and driving. My fingers on my right hand don't want to cooperate, and it takes me a long time to type. In my speech and typing the word being used is aphasia. Driving is also hard. My eyes are more sensitive to light (need sunglasses most of the time) and I have another challenge as well--being mindful of what's happening all around me. I'm working on that one also.

All of this means that though I score high enough on intelligence, I can't work right now. The lady who did my job before I did came back from August through mid-December. I couldn't remember in November how to do my job. The owner very kindly kept my job that long for me, but when I couldn't relearn it fast enough, someone else had to be hired.

This means I spend many quiet days at home. I read. For a time all I read was Christian fiction. I watch some movies. Some friends come over and take me out as they can. More often now I pray and try to listen to God. It gets easier as I get less angry. I just started reading books like Competent Christian Counseling by Tim Cllnton--a 700-some page book I've been wanting to read for a long time. Now I'm on Crisis and Trauma Counseling by Norman Wright.

In October, two of my children moved me into their apartment complex so it would be easier for them to help me with rides to the dr, the grocery, etc. This meant changing churches. It's a challenge getting to know people in church (or in the apartments) when it is hard to talk. But I like the worship here--it has been helping me get closer to God again.

There is more to share about the effects this is having on my life, but not today. Talk to you all later.

God is Calling Us...

This is the note before the article. Yes, I am still working on my series, Relationships: By the Book Part 3 (NT2), but all my writing came to an abrupt halt as the thoughts below began to fill my mind. So I needed to "follow my nose" or the "wind of the Spirit" and go in this direction first. I pray God bless this to you, and I encourage you to feel free to comment. –

Why do I encourage you to comment here and on any article? I believe that dialogue in the Body of Christ, sharing our struggles and thoughts and questions and respectfully and prayerfully listening to one another can help us grow more quickly. ... Is anyone up for an adventure to find out? (You could even comment on other comments so long as it's done with respect and the intent to learn and grow...).

God is calling us, but what is He calling us to? As I listen to His heartbeat, I hear a message that is "coming back around” in the church. I first heard it some 30 years ago...and I agreed and said, "Yes, Lord." But what I didn't know was that in my "yes" so long ago, I was inviting my loving Father God to show me I was incapable of doing it in a way that pleased Him till He changed me.

These many years later, I am hearing the call again. In fact, I was reading a Christian website a couple years ago, and the input by various people said ahead of time that God was going to bring the message back. Now mind you, I am not sorry for this message or for my continued "yes," but do you know what my response was when I first heard it was coming back? Spiritual person that I am, my first response was, "Oh, no!" (Yes, I know--when I shared that with my pastor, who is being led to share the message on a continuing basis with our church now, he was as surprised at my reaction as you probably are.) The truth is that message brought much turmoil into the Body of Christ. (In the years since I heard it the first time, I learned that what I thought had been a local phenomenon had been preached in places all over the country--just as is happening now. The turmoil from the message was also nearly identical in any place I know of where the message had been proclaimed.)

What caused the turmoil? I believe we (logically) thought we could actually do what God was asking. I believe even ministry thought it could produce (or felt it was their responsibility to produce) the fruit of that word in the Body. But, as I've learned in the ensuing years, and as I wrote to a minister recently, "Ministry is called to preach its way into a corner that it cannot get out of except God Himself fulfill the Word He had you preach." Likewise, for us to think we can live the things God is speaking is unrealistic. Why? Because we have been so tainted by "sin's paintbrush" from the fall right on into today that on our own we cannot think or perceive or do anything the way God intends.

That is why it is so very important that we listen to how God wants us to receive and apply what we are hearing. We must realize we are incapable of applying it in and of ourselves. The principle of us trying to apply what God says is spoken to in Mark 3:23b-24 (just substitute the word "self" or "flesh" for "devil" or "Satan") where Jesus says, "Does it make sense to send a devil to catch a devil, to use Satan to get rid of Satan? A constantly squabbling family disintegrates." (from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.) I believe we were even warned about that years ago, but for the most part neither leaders nor people knew how to avoid the traps Satan was laying against that powerful message.

What is God's antidote to this message once again being preached going awry? I believe there are some things in place in the body of Christ today that weren't there years ago, things that will "make the message go right" this time if we take the time to meditate, talk and listen to Father God and learn what they mean instead of merely giving them lip-service. Let me also add that the fact that they were not there 30 years ago was not an oversight on God's part. I believe God has been maturing the Body of Christ as fast as possible, and that we needed to go through the maturing those experiences brought to get us where we are today. The message that will counteract the poison Satan tries to inject to cause the message to twist is the knowledge (let me emphasize - it is not the "head knowledge" but rather the "heart knowledge") of God our Father's love for us. As author S. J. Hill (mentioned below) says (my paraphrase), human beings are wired to long for and respond from the heart to His love.

So what is the "dangerous" God-inspired message that was spoken some 30 years ago and is now being proclaimed again? The message is that of "surrender to Christ," or "dying or death to self." It is probably also called other things like "total consecration or sanctification" depending on where you hear it.

Surrender of our lives must begin with surrender of our hearts. It cannot be done rightly from mental assent or "in the flesh." It can only be done as we intimately experience Father's love for us. Once that is firmly established in our lives as a reality, then our love for God is a response to and a reflection of His love for us. That is the climate in which our surrender must be given.

That climate will also cause us to understand the "fellowship of Christ's sufferings" (Phil 3:10) correctly. For too many years, I thought that meant merely "dying to self," or surrendering my wants and desires. That is part of it, but if that is all it entails, it leaves a void that can too readily be filled the wrong way, with self-righteous pride and a judgmental attitude among other things. If we stop there, we are left with religion.

In our body, we are just finishing a serious 21-day "fast as you are led." We set up a blog for back-and-forth feedback, with regular postings by our pastor and room for our comments. Here's what I was meditating on and led to share regarding "the fellowship of [Christ's] sufferings"—I generally have understood that to mean [firstly] the issue of dying to self and [secondly] the pain Jesus felt on earth among an unholy people [because He was so enamored of His Father and His ways, but]... the Lord is bringing me face to face with something even deeper. The fellowship of His sufferings was not only His own pains that He experienced in following God, but also the pain of sinful humanity’s sufferings.

In other words, the other very real suffering Jesus experienced was in His being willing to be Emmanuel, God-with-us enough to feel our brokenness. That is quite different from the "death to self" we experience. It is having that issue settled and being willing to take on with the Lord the pains of those others who are not reconciled with Him... . It is only as I [pass through the first two realms-of dying to self and becoming very disquieted with sin because of my closeness to Father God and] become willing to bear the pains of separated humanity with Jesus (not for Him), that [I] will demonstrate His character and the authenticity of the message of the good news…because as He is so are we in this world (I Jn 4:17).

Friends, the only way we will navigate these waters successfully is as we "die to self" and "wholly surrender" out of responding to our Bridegroom's wooing. That is the only way our surrender won't turn into a sinful (yes, I said sinful) legalistic, religious exercise that is dry as toast and self-righteous to boot. That kind of surrender is not only damaging to us, but to those who encounter us. That kind of surrender takes both us and others further away from God. God, in calling for our surrender, is not wanting self-martyrdom--that is what false religions birth. We serve a living God who is not calling us to dry doctrine so that we end up like the Pharisees Jesus rebuked, but to heartfelt, living surrender that will result in His very life being lived through us.

Are we willing, as the Body of Christ to learn of our Father's love for us? Are we willing to get before Him and beg Him to teach us what we don't know and haven't experienced on a day-to-day basis even if we've been saved? Our love will not cut it. It was marred by the fall and continued sin; our love continues to keep us from knowing God’s love which is unconditional.

Today God is doing something precious. He is revealing His love for His bride, the Body of Christ. Let's take a look at some things He's sharing with us through leaders and others who have been walking with God through thick and thin for years. The following is just a sampling:

"It takes God to love God. It takes God to pursue God." That is from page 8 paragraph 5 (and it is expounded on page 122, paragraph 1) of S.J. Hill's book, Enjoying God: Experiencing Intimacy with the Heavenly Father (available among other places through Amazon.com). We love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19b). The author makes the point that there is certainly a place to pursue God with passion, but we must never forget (or stop coming to know and experience on an ever-deepening level) the love God has for us that elicits our response of love to Him. –There are treasures here that will help us, friends.

Then there's Kay Warren's (Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in CA is her husband) Dangerous Surrender: What Happens When You Say Yes to God. It was a very good, convicting book about why we totally surrender to God. In it, Kay shares the process God took her through (and her very honest reactions and responses in working through the process) to bring her to that third aspect of the fellowship of Christ's sufferings.

Another helpful book is Voices of the Faithful: Inspiring Stories of Courage from Christians Serving Around the World "with Beth Moore and friends who put their lives on the line for God." It is a book of 366 one-page "get real" devotions written by missionaries around the world. It again takes me back to the real meaning of surrender, the struggle with it even when we’ve received Father’s love for us, and the why of it.

For help in letting God grow us, my pastor found a gem: Anonymous, by Alicia Britt Chole, a former atheist--it is a small book with big concepts. It is not self-help or positive thinking, but what God can do in us during, and how He works with us in our winter seasons (or as some say, the “dark night of the soul”).

These are just a few of the materials out there that God is using to bring us further in real Christianity so we don't fall prey to the traps of religion. Are we willing to start or continue or pick up where we left off in the journey? Remember, the mercies of God are new every morning. Can you hear? God is calling us...

Relationships: By the Book - Part 2 (NT1)

In part one (OT) of Relationships: By the Book we took a very quick survey of God’s rocky relationship with His creatures. Actually, God didn’t have the hot/cold, on-again, off-again relationship—sin warped us and we went from being God-centered and considering others to being self-centered! From then on, for the most part, our mentality toward God became, “I’ll follow You as long as You do what I want,” or “I’ll obey and serve You as long as I can see the payoff.” Meanwhile, our mentality toward others became, as Cain said when God asked the whereabouts of his brother Abel, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Giving in to sin, we exchanged unconditional love—enjoying God and His creatures without any strings attached—for dysfunctional, manipulative, conditional love. In that exchange we also lost truth, trust which has its basis in truth, and openness. As the curtain closes on the Old Testament, God’s people had moved from rejection to giving Him “lip service”—outward obedience and inward rebellion. This resulted in pride, self-righteousness, and a legalistic “system” of religion, which took them even further away from real relationship with Him and each other, because it gave them the deceptive form of godliness while denying the power of right relationship with Him and His creatures.

This is where, after a 400 year silence from Malachi to Matthew, we see Jesus appear on the world’s stage. Creator and Father God could have given up on us; He could have destroyed us and started over. But instead, the Bible tells us (John 3:16) Father God still loved us unconditionally, so into this mess He sent Jesus, His very best—His very own Son who chose to come and leave the privileges of being God behind. While Jesus still was God by virtue of virgin birth, He became fully man, sinless man, but man who had to learn just as we do (Heb 2:10 & 5:8). He was born into that nation God started in Genesis with Abraham. He was the One God had intended from the very beginning Who would “make things right.”

Because He was the reconciler, the One to bring real, lasting peace (as opposed to peace at any price) between God and man and man and man (Mt 22:37-39), and because His life, death and resurrection ushered in the concept of the Body of Christ (Eph 1:3-11, 3:1-11, I Corin 12:12-14, Eph 4:11-16), Jesus was and is all about right relationships. He desires with all His being for us to relate in a healthy manner, first with the Trinity (Father God, Jesus Himself, and the Holy Spirit) and secondly, as a living outgrowth of that fellowship, with one another. Since that is His desire, it is very important to study His time on earth, for He is our example in these (as in all) matters (Jn 13:14-15).

To consider Jesus’ relationships with us humans, we must first look at His relationship with His Father God and the Holy Spirit, for again, it is only out of that vertical relationship that right relationships can happen between us on a horizontal, earthly level. Why? Because, as we saw in part one of Relationships: By the Book, sin immediately severed right relationship between God and us, and from there, sinfully distorted relationships from person to person.

What was Jesus’ relationship on earth like with Father God? Remember, if His pattern of relationships seems strange, it is because we have looked out of a distorted lens our whole lives. He alone knows what right relationships are. His ways are patterns for us. Thinking along those lines, He was always looking to His Father for direction as to what to say and do. Consider John 8:38: I speak what I have seen with My Father… NKJV, or as it says in The Message, I'm talking about things I have seen while keeping company with the Father - THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved and John 15:15 …all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. NKJV

What did Jesus do that caused Him to be in such close relationship with Father God? Matt 14:23 says, With the crowd dispersed, [Jesus] climbed the mountain so he could be by Himself and pray. He stayed there alone, late into the night. - from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved

Matt 26:36-39 Then Jesus went …to a garden called Gethsemane and told His disciples, "Stay here while I go over there and pray." …He plunged into an agonizing sorrow. Then He said, "This sorrow is crushing my life out. Stay here and keep vigil with Me." Going a little ahead, He fell on His face, praying, "My Father, if there is any way, get Me out of this. But please, not what I want. You, what do You want?" - from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved

Jesus prayed. He got alone with God whenever He needed to, and spoke plainly what was on His heart. Being honest with His feelings, He nonetheless chose to follow God, regardless of the cost to Himself. As the verses above indicate, He also listened. He “kept company” with His Father (Jn 8:38 The Message-above); this was not a religious exercise—this was a real connection born from a real relationship. When He heard, He went out and obeyed, then came back to His Father for more prayer and “grace to help in time of need.”

What was Jesus’ relationship with the Holy Spirit? His earthly life started with the Holy Spirit planting Him in Mary’s womb. The Bible says in Matt 1:20 ...Mary's pregnancy [Jesus] is Spirit-conceived. God's Holy Spirit has made her pregnant. - from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved

When Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, it says in Luke 3:22, the Holy Spirit, like a dove descending, came down on Him. And along with the Spirit, a voice: "You are My Son, chosen and marked by My love, pride of My life." - from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved

Right after this, it says in Luke 4:1-2: Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights He was tested… - from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved

This One who had a real connection with His Father, who prayed, who listened, who obeyed was empowered and enabled to obey by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was led by the Spirit into testing; He was led by the Spirit into and in His ministry—and He was led by the Spirit into and through the crucifixion. Jesus knew the other member of the Trinity intimately. In the book of Acts are many references to what part the Holy Spirit plays in our lives—Jesus knew Him intimately and relied on Him constantly. He did the same things for Jesus it says He will do for us.

The only way Jesus could have represented the heart of God powerfully enough both in word and deed to get past sinful man’s distortion of the God-breathed written Word was to seek the fellowship and direction of Father God and the Holy Spirit. Without that fellowship, since He left His God-privileges when He came to earth in bodily form, He would not have been able to live His life as the Father intended—as man’s “bridge” back to God. He wouldn’t have been able to preach Mt 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount, because that took delving deep into areas of men’s hearts. That sermon had the same power to divide soul from spirit and get to the thoughts and intents of the heart that Heb. 4:12-13 says the God-breathed, God-inspired written Word has. Both the written word and Jesus’ message were authored by the Holy Spirit.

There is more to say about our Lord and Master in the way of relationships, and that will be left for part 3 of Relationships: By the Book (NT2).