Discerning true ministry and fellowship by T. Austin Sparks

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discerning the spirits, experience, fellowship, following Jesus, Growing in Christ, spiritual growth, T.A. Sparks, true ministry

This blog post should give some food for thought, I hope. Q: How can we discern true from false ministry? A: If we look closer at it, we should ask ourselves whether the ministry concerned is focused on a person or a group ministering to (mainly passive) believers or is the minister busily trying to change the audience, i.e. the human beings, instead of pointing to the Holy Spirit who alone can change us. Both ministries would represent a horizontal gospel of sorts while vertical gospel preaching usually looks first to God and then to man! If we have a true ministry, then we bring Christ to the believer, hoping and praying that everybody who hears us will discover the most intimate relationship possible – with God, our Father, and with Jesus Christ.

“That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that [y]our joy may be full.” (1 Jn 1:3-4 KJV)

Drawn toward the Light

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darkness, encouragement, experience, following Jesus, forgiveness, God's love, inspiration, Jesus Christ, light, Light and Darkness, sin, thought life, Walking in the Light

After many gray days lately, last week the sun came out for a short time again. Swimming under an almost clear blue sky in my favorite outdoor pool, I suddenly got aware of the fact that all human beings, even most animals and plants are drawn toward the visible light. These few sunrays made the water sparkle and glitter both on the surface and underneath. Due to the warm temperature inside (30° C, i.e., 86° F) the pool soon turned into a vapor bath. As the cold Eastern winds blew stronger, playing a funny game with these continually shaping clouds of steam, my heart was rejoicing over the ingenuity of our Creator. It was really an amazing spectacle!  🙂

“Deceived by religiousness” by T. Austin Sparks

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deception, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, fellowship, Fellowship with God, other religions, salvation, T.A. Sparks, the cross

Just reading yesterday’s daily devotional by T. Austin Sparks, the introducing Bible verse somehow hit me. It says,

“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” (Rev 18:4 KJV)

I read the related article (partly, at least) and then went back to a chapter before which deals with “The Cross and Deception”. Even yesterday I had a talk with one woman who is still church bound, a fact that turns out to be a burden for her at times, and another woman who seems to love Jesus, too, yet who is still seeking for a place or a group where she feels spiritually at home. The only thing I can do for these two women is to pray that God gives them a hideaway where they cannot only rest before Him, but together with fellow believers IN Him also since it is so important that we “[b]ear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal 6:2 KJV). On our own, it is so much harder to keep walking uprightly before God, isn’t it? So, here is TAS with his apposite deliberations on the dangers of a mere outward religious life.

Deceived by religiousness. What more can be expected than the recognition of the fact of God and the giving to God of reverence, acknowledgment, and recognition: of taking active interest in things which relate to God, attending religious services, and being very busy in religious activities and interests, and finding your chief interest in religious things and the religious realm? What more can be expected? What is the matter with that? Be patient, bear with me if I say with very great emphasis: that may be one colossal delusion. So often that very thing obscures one fundamental thing, a true and living relationship with God. “Ye must be born again”, and religion very often obscures that issue. Oh, religion is no argument for salvation. Religion can be found in the darkest places of the earth. Universally there is religion; depraved and very low in many places, but universally there is the consciousness of standing in relationship to some supreme object of worship, demanding worship; and then men’s minds or imaginations get to work to give some kind of expression to that consciousness, of that supreme object of worship, and the imagination produces that sometimes out of a tree, a stone, or in the heavenly bodies; somehow it is expressed, but it is the thing that is there, behind all the forms of expression which is universal. All the highly civilised forms of that brought into the realm of Christendom are only the same thing developed. It does not say that Christendom’s more intelligent, civilised, educated interpretation of God, even though it gets its ideas from the Bible, is salvation. It may be a mighty delusion and very often is.

How to water dry land spiritually

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deception, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, fellowship, Fellowship with God, following Jesus, God's voice, knowing God, prayer, Satan, Seeking God, sheep, T.A. Sparks, wilderness

Spiritual wildernesses do exist. Dry spells where you are tempted to believe you pray to a wall as nobody seems to hear your requests, they are real to the one who gets closer and closer to God. As illogical as it might seem, people who do not really seek more from God have less problems with prayer as they do not really expect God to answer them, either, when they keep clinging to pre-formulated prayers and hymns. However, can our relationship with our Creator ever be business as usual…?  🙄 In fact, if we truly want to feed on the living God, we must quit our comfort zone and cherished traditions because seeking God is always an adventure! An adventure that can be both exhausting and rewarding, unnerving and intriguing. Or as T. Austin Sparks put it so well,

The importance of Oneness with Christ for fellowshipping with one another

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agape, church, discerning the spirits, experience, family, fellowship, Fellowship with God, God's love, heart, Jesus Christ, mind, Oneness, T.A. Sparks, The Holy Spirit, the mind of Christ

My favorite public pool currently (Bibert Bad, Zirndorf)
– Picture taken from http://www.romantisches-franken.de

Strange… during the last two or three weeks I thought about writing another blog, but I was either too busy with visiting our family members who live scattered in Bavaria or I felt no inclination to start writing on the computer because of summer time. Many plants (about 130) on our two balconies and inside our flat need to be cared for, too. Honestly, I like gardening more than being on the internet and swimming in the outdoor public pool (s. picture above) was more attractive to me as well. It is only in water when several body pains disappear and therefore I swam more than I walked lately. 😉 In Germany we experienced a first heat wave in April, which was VERY unusual, and it seemed hot summer did not want to take a break in May, either. Eventually, today it began to rain a bit which has been much needed by nature and so I sat down in front of the computer, wondering what I was doing here. 🙄 Again, no inclination to write. As I checked the latest file on my thumb drive which is called “New Post”, I saw that I had written this very thing beneath on May 25^th already. Forgetful Susanne! 😊 So, now here you are… the rest of it at least… which means I deleted some details that did not speak to me today any more.

Disclosing Deeds of Darkness

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being born again, Christianity, church, darkness, deception, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, eyes of the heart, false spirits, God's voice, Jesus Christ, light, poems, prayer, preaching, prophecy, separation from religious spirits, separation from the world, worldly spirits

Photo by Sarah Schuberth

To be honest with you, although I was hell-bent on going to bed, quite some time after midnight I felt the strong ‘nudge’ from God to re-publish an older poem of mine, maybe, even two. I do know that this is not my poetry blog and most of my readers prefer reading blog articles instead. Nonetheless, I want to emphasize here, once again, the danger of cherishing any kind of fellowship or friendship, not only with worldly people (which should be clear), but also with those people who are used to meeting on a regular basis where one ought to hear from God. As I have often made clear before, a spirit being who has been birthed from above will, like God, not be predictable in their speaking, writing and doing. We are like the wind if we listen to God’s leading only. So, if we really want to have spiritual relationships first with God and then with one another, too, we do not only need to go away from the world and its pleasures, we should also say ‘Bye bye’ to any regular and obligatory gathering, whatever form it might take (attending church, home church meeting, connecting via internet etc.). The reason for doing so is that we cannot submit to God’s unpredictable leading and to predictable tradition (like preaching or listening to a sermon every Sunday and singing hymns in determined order) at the same time! Either we obey God and cannot be figured by anyone who does not yet have His Spirit, or we submit to another spirit that can be put in a box, a spirit that can be controlled by us. It might be easier and feel better to go on attending meetings with other Christians, but if God does not show up in such a gathering because His Spirit is quenched there, who are we really looking for? 🙄

Beware of Job’s false friends

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Christianity, compassion, dogs, fellowship, foxes, friends, God's voice, heart, Joseph Benson, Michael Clark, Satan, shepherd, swine, the new self, the old self, true faith, vipers, wickedness, wolves

“Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:8-12 KJV) – Photo by Susanne Schuberth

I have often pondered the thought to close the comments section completely and to remove the LIKE buttons, too. The reason why I have not done it until now was that I appreciate feedback on what I write and that I have learned a lot from commenters as well. However, it has become clear to me that this continued struggle to moderate or to not moderate responses, or to eventually delete replies I had moderated before as another hidden evil spirit finally manifested in a longer comment thread, this struggle is quite exhausting for me and it is very distracting at that. I sooo love and long to hear God’s voice through commenters and, dear reader, sometimes it really happens! There is a handful of faithful commenters who only weigh in when they have something encouraging to contribute. They act cautiously and lovingly, pondering on what God might have to say. As for these, I paste a quote I found today on my daily Catholic kitchen calendar. It reads,

“A friend is someone who takes your hand and touches your heart.” (Author unknown)

What hinders spiritual growth

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deception, discerning the spirits, exhortation, experience, eyes of the heart, feelings, fellowship, following Jesus, God's guidance, God's love, intellect, preaching, suffering, T.A. Sparks, teaching, true faith, Truth in Love

STOP!!! … AND RUN when you sense deceiving spirits approaching you! (Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

Let me begin with an analogy we all know. Imagine you see a small child that has not been fed properly by his parents. Instead, he was badly nourished and therefore grows slowly, even much slower than his peers. Maybe, his parents are extremely poor and cannot feed this child as they should. If this small child gets no help from others, sooner or later the first sicknesses will befall him and most probably, he won’t get that old, either. What is so sad to observe in the physical realm exists in the spiritual realm, too. Nonetheless, the difference is that it is easier to feed a malnourished child than a malnourished spirit being for we can see it immediately when a child is too lean, too pale, and very weak. But how can we discern a believer who has fed on the wrong spirits? Can we see the deception they have fallen prey to as well?  🙄

Before the thunderstorm…

Tags

circumcision of the heart, discerning the spirits, dying to self, experience, following Jesus, Michael Clark, pain, resurrection, Satan, the cross, the new self, the old self

Yesterday, before the thunderstorm…
(Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

Let me provoke you here a bit. I argue that Satan has ruled the Institutional Church (IC) from her early beginnings and I also believe he did not stop there. The devil even goes so far to draw those into his spider web of lies again who once would leave the institutional church system because they saw its serious shortcomings. And it does not seem to me that he has had great difficulties in doing so. Whoever does not preach the true gospel of Christ, but a mixed version that is more pleasing to the listener’s ear, has become deceived whether they know it or not. But alas, they do not know it. If they did, they would not be deceived, right? They could repent if God gave them eyes to see the truth. It is so saddening to observe when they are confronted with the truth, instead of repentance, false spirits rise up and manifest the spirit of antichrist aka the ‘instead-of-Christ-spirit’ as Michael Clark told me several times in the past. There is our old self’s nature, our fallen human nature, the flesh that always wants to be like God without obeying Him and His Spirit’s leading (cf. Gal 5:14). In his recent recent article Michael wrote,

Man loves to try to do the works of God, accumulate knowledge, know with his own mind, and imitate God instead of knowing God intimately with his heart and allowing God to conform him into the image of Christ by the plan and design of the Father. The fleshly state of fallen man still loves to eat the fruit of that same forbidden tree instead of Jesus, the Tree of Life (See John 6:51).

Religious man loves to collect Bible knowledge and knowledge of doctrines so he can decide for himself what is good and what is evil. He loves to heap to himself teachers that tickle his religious ears and to garner to himself degrees in theology. Yet, when the New Testament speaks of “knowing the Lord,” it speaks of an intimate knowing that goes much deeper than a mere accumulation of facts.

What grieves me…

Tags

compassion, deception, discerning the spirits, divorce, exhortation, experience, eyes of the heart, God's guidance, grace, Jesus Christ, leadership, Remarriage, repentance, Satan, sin

Photo by Susanne Schuberth

God alone knows our hearts and why we do what we do. From hence, we have no right to judge others wrongly and condemn them. However, we need to know with which people we can be open and which people we should beware of. Just yesterday I had two seemingly similar, yet also different experiences.