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There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. (Proverbs 14:12) Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, But the LORD weighs the hearts. (Proverbs 21:2) If we would just get this one simple truth my brethren – if we would only be hit hard enough by what this is telling us – what riches would lie ahead in this living walk! What revelation it would yield! My friends, I confess to you here that it has taken 40 years of living in myself for me to finally and ultimately surrender my way to Him. I am spent, and there is nothing left to be tried. A man, if he is honest will come to admit this. Only then can the Lord hope to have His way in him. If we have truly come to the point of unconditional surrender at the throne of the Most High God, then we have necessarily come to the realization that our way leads only to death. Here, my friends, is the deep-running root of all real repentance - the renouncing of all that is bound up in us, all that we have come to be in Adam, all that we are and think and feel - all that runs wildly through our minds and hearts, and spills out into the world through our plans and words and living. We have come to recognize, as did the Apostle Paul, that profound spiritual truth, that in us “nothing good dwells”. No exceptions or exclusions; nothing carried forward into the new life. Nothing means nothing here folks. I am sorry if that bothers you, but only truth can set us free. Six thousand years of human reasoning, scheming, organizing, inventing, contriving, and squirming – clearly reveal that man’s way leads only to unfulfillment, misery, failure, emptiness, despair, disillusionment and ultimately (what the Bible calls) death. We have been cursed you see, and no amount of humanistic revisionism can deny the record. Man alone and apart from his Maker – has been a total and abject failure in every single endeavor we choose to name. Now it may ultimately take a lifetime, or most of it anyway, for us to arrive at this realization – that our own way amounts to nothing. Yet by the Lord’s grace alone He watches and waits patiently until we come to the end of ourselves, then crumble in a mournful heap beneath His feet. We are done! We give up! There is nothing more to be said or tried! All of our best instincts and talents, all of our higher learning and wisdom, everything that was right in our own eyes for so long, all of our religion and all of the new things that were never new at all – everything we have to offer, all adding up to a BIG, FAT, useless ZERO! Yet it all seemed so right didn’t it? It seemed somehow right and reasonable that the fruit of the forbidden tree was good for food, that it was pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable for gaining wisdom. So many things, in fact, seem to make sense to us on the surface don’t they - like humanistic psychology to gain access to the inner man, like partnership with the world to advance the gospel, like highly structured and efficient church organizations for meeting the varied needs of the saints. These things may seem reasonable, they may seem to make sense on the surface – yet beware my friends, for this is God’s universe and he alone makes the rules. He alone determines what is right and good! He alone declares what is true! He alone knows the way back to Himself! Oh if we would only know what was truly lost in that garden so long ago, my brethren. If we would only come to grasp how far we fell, and how deeply we need a new and better way! A living way! A way that leads to life and fullness and restoration with He who formed us solely for Himself! ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. (Jer 21:8), and… “As for God, His way is perfect; The word of the LORD is proven; He is a shield to all who trust in Him. (Psalm 18:30), and again… “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. (Deut 30:19) Such fools we are, my brethren, and such a twisted way we have devised. Just look around you – look at all of the broken, empty, twisted lives of friends and family and strangers all around us! Sheep without a shepherd! See how they keep blindly resorting to the same useless ways to find peace, and healing and life. Look into their eyes, my brethren – I do every single day now, and it just about breaks the heart of God in me, for in them I see myself; I see all of humanity stumbling and fumbling toward the only hopeless and bloody destiny we have ever known. There is death all around us and if you don’t see that then I have nothing for you, for you may be dead already yourself. I am done Lord. I give up. I am tired of resisting you and all the wisdom of heaven. Forgive me Father, for my way that has taken me so far from You and Your Glorious Son, from life as you intended. Help me O Lord, to turn from this way and live. Teach me Your way, Precious Father, the living way that is in your Son alone. Help me no longer to hold any confidence in the flesh, in the natural man, or in the ways and ideas of men. Make your way straight before my sight dear Lord, that I would walk in it and never turn back. By your grace, help me to humbly submit all that I am to You that You might lead me in Your way - the narrow way that leads to Life and All Fullness in Jesus Christ! My brethren… beloved children of the Lord - why persist in any way that leads only to death and emptiness? The Lord Jesus Christ is our way now. For He alone declared - “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”. His is a Living Way, a way of truth, of righteousness, of peace and of life. He not only knows where we are going, but He is also our means of getting there. There is nothing in ourselves we need or can trust. The flesh profits nothing, and we are no longer to walk according to the flesh unto death, but according to the spirit unto life. The way of Cain and Balaam lead only to the pit and death – O how we need to see and know this, and to forsake it at any cost! Our way flows out of what we are apart from Him – dead. His way flows out of Him and leads to all truth and life. For He is Life! It is a spiritual way, and only in and by His indwelling Spirit can we venture down this path. Only frustration and vanity can result from us trying to follow Him outside of Him, under the power of our natural lives. Consider how so much of what we call church and ministry today bears this out ever so tragically, as men use their way to advance the kingdom of God. - We build machines, whereas the Lord brings His mighty power to bear on the situation. - We walk by sight, whereas He wants us to walk by faith, trusting in He alone for all of our strength and provision. - We erect multi-layered institutions to help and heal broken lives, whereas He gives us His Beloved Son, who holds the power of life and living in His hands. - We send men with impressive credentials and good intentions, whereas He sends His Son who created all of the universe, in the quickening power of the Holy Spirit. - We seek quick and broad results, whereas He seeks pure and lasting fruit. - We are ever foolish, repeating the same mistakes over and over again whereas He is all-knowing and all-wise, never failing in any pursuit. He acts once and the result holds for eternity! - We are earthly and trapped in time, whereas He fills all things and holds the beginning and the end in Himself. - We skate about on the surface of life, excited by external results, whereas He focuses on the heart, ever going deeper, and asking more of us. - We are easily impressed by painted and hollow things, and by numbers, whereas He demands substance, content and reality. - We quite naturally exalt man, glorying in titles and accolades, whereas He exalts His Glorious Son, for whom the world was not worthy. - We trust in the confidence of the flesh, whereas He moves quietly in the power and life of the Spirit. - We love the darkness and borrow routinely from the world, whereas He scattered the darkness, and testified against it. - We are unstable, knocked about by mood and temperament, whereas He is a Rock! Again, what is this way of men that leads to death? It is the way of the humanist, and don’t think for one minute that this devilish curse hasn’t infected the church to its very core, and pulled it down to the pit, for the fruits are clear to those with eyes to see. What is a humanist you ask? Here is a definition I stumbled on, and it is as obscene and insightful as any - A Humanist believes in "Humanism," a philosophy free from beliefs in the supernatural and dedicated to the search for meaning and values for individuals on this earth through reliance on reason, intelligence, scientific method, democratic process, and social compassion. Humanism affirms the inherent dignity and worth of every human being and asserts that we are responsible for the realization of our aspirations and have within ourselves the power of achieving them. Humanism contends that human beings are a part of nature, that we have emerged as a result of an evolutionary process, and that our values - religious, ethical, political, and social - have their sources in human experience and culture. If you are perfectly honest, seeing with the eyes of the spirit, than clearly you will recognize strains of this evil – this way of man – in so much of what we call Christianity today. And it is nothing new by any means. Indeed, it is as old as that tangled garden, and as deadly as the dragon’s breath that whispered into the ear of mother Eve. Just as then, it has become the wisdom of the age, and we will do well to heed the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians - However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written: “ Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2: 6-16) Are you spiritual my brother? Or does the spirit of the world, and the way of man still drive you onward and downward unto defeat and death? Have you once and for all renounced and surrendered your way to the True and Living Way that is the Lord Jesus Christ? Or do you still trust and lean on your natural instincts - to get ahead in this world, or to advance yourself among men? My brethren - these things must not be so among us, for He is the only way for us now. My sincere prayer for all of you is that you will see this, and avail yourself of Him, and throw yourself into Him with fearless abandon, leaving all else behind. Acknowledge and affirm Him now as your only way, and ask that He would grant you the faith to fall back into Him with complete confidence! Father - we ask all of these things by Your grace alone, that no longer would we seek our own way, but follow Your Son all the way to eternal life. In Him we pray, Amen. Please pray for us here at Living-Walk, that we would watch and see the Master at work, and understand what He would have us do. Your friend in Christ Jesus,
Wayne |
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