It is true that we still hear about God’s great work through His faithful servants here and there. However, we are at a time that requires a lot of discernment so that we may not be deceived. There are some big manifestations in certain ministries; yet, they might include some fleshly enthusiasm or falseness even if this was unintentional. There are some other manifestations of the work of the Lord with His faithful servants which are genuine; and these encourage our faith so that we may move forward and refrain from the negativity or superficiality.
This is the faith by which the purposes of God are fulfilled. God reveals these purposes when He finds men of God who have learned to walk by faith, relying on His word and His promises –as they believe them and live them out. This is because if we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself. In other words, He adheres to His word and His promises.
And the reason behind this was those men who should have received, known, and discerned the spirit of the man of God, David, and understood God’s will and purposes during their journey with David and their companionship with him; yet this, unfortunately, had not happened!
The exact opposite happened. They cared about the outer matters only; while, they were totally estranged from the matters of the heart and the spirit.
This is a lesson for us as well to discern and to examine our heart and spirit as God has entrusted us with a spiritual walk where we experienced and tasted very blessed days, the open heavens of God, true and abundant graces of God being poured on us, and illuminating revelations given to us by the Spirit of God.
As we approach the middle of the great Lent, it is suitable to reflect and ponder on the mystery of this holy Lent and what is poured for us in it from one year to the other and think of our past this year. First we shall talk about the fast of Jesus during His time of incarnation and then we shall talk about our fast and its association with our time.
The great Lent in the eyes of the church was really an important event because they considered it as time where we can receive a real fresh blessing that can lead us throughout the year, from Lent to Lent. And this blessing is not like we think just a blessing that can make us cleared up or being more anointed, it is a real blessing that can open for them a full revelation of Gods plan for them for a year.
One of the fathers of the Church once stated: ‘the goal of the Christian life is to be filled with and acquire the Holy Spirit’. We are used to viewing the Son, Jesus, as a Person who came to earth, lived among us and completed our salvation. Similarly, we view the Father as a Person who is similar to the earthly father in His care and love for us. However, we tend to view the Holy Spirit as a power, a stream, or a movement; while in actual fact He is a Person –one of the Persons of the Trinity. Therefore, like any person, we need to get to know Him. We know beforehand that we are invited to a life-long and eternal relationship with Him and to co-work with Him. Therefore, we would undoubtedly desire to know more about Him and discover His character and characteristics so that we may be able to harmonise with Him. The bible reveals four main principles concerning our relationship with the Holy Spirit:
When God called the people to worship, we notice that there are 3 different levels of worship recorded in this important chapter, Exodus 24: 1-2:
The people should not go up the mountain but remain at its foot.
Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel should go up the mountain but remain at a certain distance; they shall worship from afar.
Moses alone goes to the top of the mountain.
Moses explained all these arrangements to the people to prepare them to worship in accordance to these arrangements. The people responded by accepting and obeying the guidance of the Lord.
At this point, God’s triad plan of worship began to be implemented. It is full of great mysteries.
When Adam was cut from God he is not only under condemnation but he lost the stream of life that was flowing from God through all his being. When the stream of life was cut, corruption manifested in darkness in mind, immoral feelings and distorted emotions, paralysed will and every member began to work in a wrong way. So Jesus came to justify us, to restore us to holiness and to cleanse our bodies and finally when we go to our eternal home, we will get glorified bodies.
When the inner man of a person was grown fully and the tent was taken off at the end of the life, they saw the inner man of the person coming out and rising to heaven with the same complete contour of that person but now the glory of Christ is filling this inner man. It starts as a seed which grew and was transformed to be a complete inner man, having the same outer contour but with glory. This glory was covered by the flesh and then when the flesh finishes its journey on earth, the inner man comes out gloriously to go to its place in heaven.
How did the Early Church see the word „Messiah“ as a central theme throughout all the bible? Usually what we do is to read any book of the bible of the Old Testament as historical events. But if you are trying to read any book of the Old Testament as a historical event you may face those who want to attack the authority of the word of God with a lot of questions. And usually we are taken in these circles of questioning and answering. But this will take us out of the stream of life with which we must be in touch with throughout reading the word of God.
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