Wading through life

A few weeks back I DVR’d a documentary on CNBC titled Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. The whole Enron scandal being a rather distant memory at this point, I thought it would at least offer some light entertainment. Turns out, when I watched it tonight, I found it more than entertaining; it was highly revelatory.

I don’t have enough authority of knowledge in these matters to make a strong, well-supported-with-charts-and-graphs case for the purpose of this blog. But I’ll just throw out my point: I’m very concerned our great country is one big, Enron. I’d like to think I’m wrong. I’d like to think we’re past our speed bumps and blue skies await. I pray for our prosperity and a return to our senses. But there are just so darn many red flags, I can’t reason otherwise.

Summed up, the Enron scandal was a case of smoke and mirrors. There was a grandiose appearance of wealth and prosperity, but hidden far beneath layers of accounting fraud, conspiracy among the elite, and marketing/PR propaganda was a business drowning in red ink. They had some amazing, creative, industry-changing ideas (none of which I really understood), but most of them didn’t end up actually being profitable. They worked in theory, but not in reality.

Year after year, Enron came up with new layers of smoke and new pieces of glass to cover their losses. They had to come up with next big thing to keep Wall St. happy with imaginary earnings. The hoax worked for a good, long while. As long as their stock price kept climbing, they were golden.

But the C-Suite leaders couldn’t sustain the illusion indefinitely. They were eventually exposed by a keen hedge-fund manager who dared to “Ask ‘Why?’” (Enron’s corporate mantra) of the company: “Why can’t you produce a balance sheet like all the other Fortune 500 companies?” The reason, of course, is because the real balance sheet would reveal quarterly losses rather than profits. And once Wall St. caught wind of the illusion and Enron’s stock started taking hits, the wheels started coming off.

Enron leadership, though, would have its employees and shareholders believe everything was fine—that they were “as strong as ever.” “Don’t sell our stock. Don’t reallocate your retirement. We’re coming back.” Of course, the sad truth is that they didn’t. And they damaged thousands of lives as a result.

Smoke and Mirrors

Beneath the smoke and mirrors of our country’s propaganda machines—the mainstream media, our government agencies, and our own delusional thinking that everything will just work itself out because it simply has to—is some serious, serious red ink. I understand that our economy is infinitely more complex than a single corporation, no matter how large. And it’s only a portion of our global economy. But to think this house of cards—even if it’s glued together by incredibly diverse industry—can endure much more is madness. The continual shaking of world crises (wars, natural disasters, financial crises, domestic and international political unrest, etc.) and the sheer weight of our debt and budget deficits are poised to topple us or crush us.

As long as the general public is kept fairly ignorant of the stark reality of our situation, the hoax may very well continue on for a time. People love hearing “Peace and Safety!” (1 Thes. 5:3) and that drum will be beaten all the louder. Sheer public will might keep things afloat for a while. But there’s also a groundswell of truth and reality emerging. People are manning up to the situation and readying themselves to see things as they are and make hard choices. And as that happens, I wouldn’t be surprised to witness and big, fat, Enron-like Pop! that will be the end of life-as-we’ve-wanted-it-to-be.

Sorry to be a voice of gloom and doom this fine, Memorial Day weekend. Let me wrap up by saying that things “getting bad” is a very relative idea, for it implies that things have been good. Don’t get me wrong—in many ways, things have been good. We’ve prospered. We’ve enjoyed relative peace. We’ve lived decent lives. But we’re also seeing appalling moral decline. Our freedoms are being pried away. The wealth and power of our country is being hoarded by fewer and fewer people—most of them with unrighteous motives. The church is drowsy, if not asleep.

So, the end of life-as-we’ve-wanted-it-to-be isn’t inherently bad. It will likely be hard, but it doesn’t have to be bad. I don’t think that it’s God best that we go through hard times in order to get our priorities straight. But it’s something He’s willing to see us through because He knows it’s better that we lose the whole world than to forfeit our souls (Matt. 16:26).

Hope

But personally, I’m full of hope of better days. God is on the move and He’s raising up righteous leaders who are going to champion the causes of the King in our post-American dream culture. People are going to dream of storing up treasure in heaven rather than constructing white-picket fences.

Wherever there’s massive transition, there’s massive opportunity. (As our president’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste!”) But rather than using a time of crisis to jam through a pride-filled, secular humanistic solution to our problems, the bride of Christ, full of the power of the Holy Spirit, will rise up and exhibit the kingdom of God in ways never before witnessed by the world.

For even as “darkness covers the earth, and deep darkness the people; the Lord will arise over [us], and His glory will be seen upon [us]. The Gentiles shall come to [our] light and kings to the brightness of [our] rising” (Is. 60:2-3)!

We will know Him in a whole new way. And we will make Him known.

There’s a lot to learn from the book of Joshua in this hour. Joshua’s story is all about taking the land. He leads Israel in battles of both triumph and defeat as they struggle to obtain their allotted inheritance. Joshua is a book of war and conflict and strife that ends with the distribution of the spoils of war.

New, abundant land has been promised to God’s people, but, like the Israelites, we’ve been rather lethargic, if not rebellious, in responding to His summon to go in and take it. Yet, like it or not, God has sovereignly brought us over into the Promised Land. Here it is—we’re in the new land.

But getting here was the easy part. Now the real battles must take place. Thus, it’s important to understand what taking the land might look like. To be blunt: It ain’t pretty. It’s bloody battle.

Now, we know from Paul’s writing in Ephesians 6 that we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Taking the land that is set before us no longer requires the slaughter of thousands of men, women and children. Nor does it involve looking upon people with different worldviews as the enemy, for they are not. They might be under the control and influence of the enemy, but they are not the enemy.

What taking the land primarily looks like is purging it of unrighteousness and consecrating it unto the Lord. The whole reason God commanded Jacob and the Israelites to enter Canaan and slaughter all the ‘Ites is because their deeds were so dark. God tells the people of Israel in Deut. 9:4:

“Do not think in your heart, after the LORD your God has cast them out before you, saying, ‘Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land’; but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out from before you.”

Taking the Promised Land was as much a judgment of evil as it was a gift to God’s people. Sure, God had promised to Abraham in Genesis 12:

“I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

But He goes on to say in Genesis 15:16 that it wouldn’t be until the fourth generation after Abraham’s death that the people would return to Canaan to possess the land, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” God performed a 2-for-1 by singularly blessing His people while judging the unrighteous.

So, entering into our Promised Land isn’t primarily about obtaining our inheritance as the body of Christ. That happens to be an incredible fringe benefit, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about establishing the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. It’s about subduing the powers of darkness so that righteousness prevails. It’s about making His name and His way known.

Let me again make the point: this isn’t a physical battle against other people. I’m not advocating another crusade here. The natural, in-the-flesh subduing of evil is something the Lord Himself will engage in upon His return to earth (Ps. 2, Is. 63, Zeph. 3, Rev. 19). But for now, we battle in the unseen realms of power, authority, influence, ideas, thoughts, imaginations, etc.

Paul again sheds more light on this means of warfare in 2 Cor. 10:3-5 (NLT):

“We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.”

And Paul models this warfare all throughout Acts, especially in his ministry at Ephesus where he “spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the Kingdom of God.” He also performed “extraordinary miracles” through the power of God. Paul took land for the kingdom by proclaiming the Truth and displaying the power of the resurrected Jesus. And what was the result of this warfare? A purging of wickedness and a turning towards righteousness:

“…and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds. Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed” (Acts 19:17b-20).

That last sentence says it all: “The word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.” There’s maybe no clearer picture of what it looks like to take land in the Church era than that.

Conquerors Needed

God desires more Paul’s to rise up. He needs reformers who will go into the centers of influence of the enemy and demonstrate His power and love—those who will conquer new land for the Kingdom of God. Ephesus was home to the Temple of Artemis (or Diana) and the worldwide center of worship of this Greek goddess. Spiritually, it was a very dark place. Yet Paul entered with boldness and assurance that if God was for him, no one could be against him.

Which brings us back to Joshua—a man of similar courage and fame. The Lord had land for him to take by driving out the unrighteousness ‘Ites. It was to start at Jericho and continue throughout the land of Canaan until every last bit of evil had been plundered. “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you,” God told Joshua. Notice the tense shift there: “your foot will tred” is future tense while “I have given you” is past tense. The lands God was calling Joshua to take had technically already been conquered.

Conquered by whom? Jesus. He was already in the Promised Land as the pre-incarnate Commander of the Lord’s army. Jesus was waiting for the Israelites to show up and take the land He’d already subdued. Who knows, He might have been there all forty years, patiently enduring Israel’s grumbling, complaining and faithlessness in the wilderness experience.

What stood out to me when I read this recently (and was the reason I started this whole blog) was the location where Joshua runs into the Commander of the Army of the Lord: By Jericho.

“And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His sword drawn in His Hand” (Joshua 5:13a).

Jesus didn’t greet them as they crossed the Jordan. He didn’t visit them in their camps. He was on the battlefield, sword drawn, awaiting their arrival on the scene.

While God has sovereignly been with His Church, leading us across another threshold and into our new land, God’s warring, conquering nature is awaiting our arrival at the point of battle. He’s demanding a Church that will rise up in the spirit of Joshua and “be strong and very courageous.”

If we want to meet Christ in this new land and invoke His assistance (which is our only hope for victory), we must advance not just into enemy territory—we’re already there—but to the enemy’s very gates. There we will find our Conquering Hero who always leads us in triumph (2 Cor. 2:14).

I have a lot on my mind, but don’t have a long blog in me tonight. I will share, though, regarding the verses that have been going through my head a lot the past few days: Psalm 2:7-9. It’s where Jesus recounts the time the Father said to Him:

“You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give You the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

From the very beginning, from day 1, the Father made known to the Son His ultimate destiny: To rule the world. Coming to the earth as a babe to become the suffering servant and then die as the sacrificial lamb of God was only part of the story. It wasn’t the end and it wasn’t the focus. There was something much bigger going on and we catch a glimpse of that Psalm 2, where the Father reveals to the son His plan set Jesus upon the throne of His Kingdom. There was an inheritance to obtain.

In the past, I’ve often read Hebrews 12:2 with a skewed perspective. It reads: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Being the self-centered human that I am, I used to figure that surely the joy set before Jesus was the satisfaction of saving me from my sins. And maybe that was part of His joy. It might even have been a large part of it. But something now tells me that there was more to it than that.

Jesus taught on rewards a ton. One of His primary motivating principles was along the lines of: “Make temporary sacrifices now and you’ll be lavishly rewarded later.” He didn’t demand the disciples pledge their allegiance to Him without incentivizing them. He could have simply said “I’m laying down my life for you, so you owe me yours in return.” But He didn’t. In His generosity, God also provides additional motivators. In Mark 10:29-30, Jesus says that “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life.”

Sure, the persecutions muddy up the picture, as does the prospect of having to leave brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, wives and children. BUT, He promises that we’ll be abundantly compensated for the sacrifice. And so it makes sense that the Father would paint a similar picture for the Son. “Commit to enduring the shame of the cross… of making your self low… And in due time, I’ll give you the nations. The nations!”

Daniel 7:13-14 gives us insight into the transference of this inheritance into the Son’s authority:

And behold, One like the Son of Man,
Coming with the clouds of heaven!
He came to the Ancient of Days,
And they brought Him near before Him.
Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,
That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
Which shall not pass away,
And His kingdom the one
Which shall not be destroyed.

Stunning. Just like we will some day, Jesus presents Himself before the Father and inherits an everlasting Kingdom. And it’s from this inheritance that we’re rewarded ours. Daniel goes on to say in verse 18 that “the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and forever” and in verse 22 that “the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom.”

There’s a kingdom inheritance for us all—a rewards and benefits package beyond our comprehension. Much of it won’t materialize until the earth is fully repossessed by Jesus and His followers. But the repossession process is already underway and there are lands to be taken now—pillars of society for which the Church has sadly skirted its responsibility: arts & entertainment, business, education, family, government, media and religion.

It’s time that we asked of Him which nations are our inheritance and which ends of the earth are our possession. The devil has ruled this world long enough and it’s time for the revealing of the sons of God.

In 1 John 3:2, the Apostle John says that the reason we will become like Jesus upon His return is because we will finally see Him as He is. Both our natural eyes and the eyes of our heart will perceive and comprehend and understand Who Jesus actually is. We will see Him as He is. When Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, comes to claim His bride and judge humanity, all questions, doubts, confusions, denials and wrong beliefs will melt away and we will encounter unbridled, unveiled Truth for the very first time. It will be intense.

Matthew 24:30 says that he will come with “power and great glory [in brilliancy and splendor].” At this point, billions of people from the nations of earth will actually mourn [and beat their breasts and lament in anguish]. Why? Because they will be encountering authentic love, righteousness, justice and beauty face to face. And they will have turned down the opportunity to be fascinated by this Man and dwell with Him for all eternity.

But the redeemed will be caught up with this Jesus, this bridegroom king, in the heavens, and we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye. Changed into what? John says it has not yet been fully disclosed or made clear what we’ll be like. But he says we’ll resemble and be like Him. Those sketchy details alone can stretch an imagination beyond its limits, because Jesus is indescribable! With some futility, John tries to describe His encounter with Jesus on the island of Patmos in Revelation 1. He says in the midst of seven lamp stands he saw:

One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.

Try and envision someone whose countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. John wasn’t comparing Jesus’ countenance to just a shining sun, which alone will blind someone who looks upon it long enough. The comparison is to a sun shining in its strength. No wonder John fell at His feet as dead!

I share this not to exhort you to hold on for dear life and try to stick it out until Christ’s return, so that you can finally see Jesus and be changed. I share it because I believe it’s possible to begin that “seeing” process now. The Bible’s clear that there are some limits on just how much of Jesus we can perceive in this present age (1 Corinthians 13:12), but it’s also clear that we can encounter Him in more substantial ways than Moses did! And what happened to Moses when he sat before the Lord for 40 days? His face shown with the glory of God—that very same glory Jesus will bear upon His return!

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:16-18:

Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

And what do we see in this verse, but the very same principle that John makes in 1 John 3—that the key to our transformation into Christlikeness is seeing Him. As we sit before the living Word of God and behold Jesus through revelation supplied by the Holy Spirit, we are being transformed into His likeness. It’s supernatural and beyond explanation as to how this all works. But it works. From one glory to the next and to the next, we’re being changed, from the inside out, into an exact representation of Jesus Christ—that same Jesus whose voice is as the sound of many waters and whose countenance is like the sun shining in its strength.

It all starts with seeing Him as He is.

That’s why Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1 is so important for us to pray over ourselves and our loved ones: that God would give us a “spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him” and that “the eyes of [our] understanding [would be] enlightened”. It’s the Spirit who searching the deep things of God (1 Corinthians 2:6-16). Without the Spirit, God’s wisdom is hidden from us. Paul says “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.”

That’s why it’s also so important for us to continually ask God for more of the Holy Spirit. In Luke 11:9-13, Jesus follows up His famous passage about asking, seeking and knocking (which is more correctly translated as “Ask and keep on asking… seek and keep on seeking… knock and keep on knocking”) with the statement: “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” By implication, Jesus is saying that the best gift we can keep asking for and keep seeking after and keep knocking about is the gift of the Holy Spirit!

(Now for those of you who think that the filling of the Holy Spirit is a one-and-done deal you experience at the time of your conversion, I ask you: What happened to the Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13:52, who “were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit”, when Paul had already been filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:17; Acts 13:9)? I also suggest you read AW Tozer’s excellent booklet titled, quite simply, How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit.)

I spoke at Real Life Ministries this past summer about the increased revelation of Jesus Christ that the Holy Spirit is pouring out upon the earth in this hour. It can be compared to the advancement of television over the decades. The clarity with which one can behold Jesus has progressed from an old, fuzzy, black and white, tube television rendition to today’s more crisp, clear, dynamic and vibrant picture. While it’s still not quite life-like, it’s much closer to the real deal. And it will continue to advance until it crescendos at His second-coming.

Do not be content with your current revelation of Who Jesus is. Because I guarantee you that it’s incomplete, just as mine is. There were a people that thought they knew exactly what the Messiah would look like when He came the first time. They were called the Pharisees—the religious elite of their time. They were the same ones that rallied the Jews to have Jesus killed by the Romans. If our understanding of Jesus does not progress with the Spirit, we risk falling into the same trap the Pharisees did in the first century. We will reject Jesus. In my message, I shared that:

Growing in revelation of Jesus isn’t just important for those who aspire to be worldwide ministers or those who desire to be considered “great in the kingdom of heaven.” It’s also going to prove to be the vital defense mechanism against offense at the onset of His return. The more we think we know Jesus and actually don’t—to that degree we’re prone to being offended at the revealing of who He actually is.

We have to have a humble spirit that yields to God’s agenda and says, “Your ways are higher than mine. Your foolishness is greater than my wisdom. Teach me Your ways, God. By your Holy Spirit, help me see Jesus for Who He really is.”

That’s our destiny: To have a full and accurate knowledge of the Son of God. Paul says in Ephesians 4 that the purpose of apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers and pastors is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. What does that process bring about in our lives? He explains:

[That it might develop] until we all attain oneness in the faith and in the comprehension of the [full and accurate] knowledge of the Son of God, that [we might arrive] at really mature manhood (the completeness of personality which is nothing less than the standard height of Christ’s own perfection), the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ and the completeness found in Him.

Paul is once again in agreement with John that the prerequisite to spiritual maturity and Christlikeness is a full and accurate knowledge of the Son of God, AKA seeing Him.

Encountering Jesus is what transformed Paul’s life on the road to Damascus. And it is what will transform us. Let us continue the journey.