The Lord who pursues us

In Revelations chapter 3:15-20 John the Apostle wrote a letter and gave a word from the Lord to the church at Laodicea. He writes, “I know your record of works and know what you are doing; you are neither hot nor cold, it’s my desire that you be either hot or cold! So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of My mouth! For you say, I am rich and have prospered and grown wealthy and I am in need of nothing. With this attitude, don’t you realize that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked? Therefore I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined and tested by fire, that you may be truly wealthy, and white clothes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nudity from being seen and eye salve to put on your eyes that you may see. Those who I love, I tell their faults to and convince and reprove and instruct them. So be enthusiastic and have a passion to talk to Me and follow My advice at all times. Allow Me to change your mind and attitude. I stand at your hearts door and knock asking permission to come in and have a very real relationship with you.”

One of the most devastating and false interpretations of scripture that I have ever heard is this interpretation that says, because these people had this condition of self sufficiency and thought they had arrived, they made God sick to His stomach and He was going to vomit them out of His mouth. It’s this kind of false conditional love themes being preached and taught, that keep Christians in this mentality that makes you not sure how much God really loves you. I don’t know what it’s going to take at times to stop these kinds of doctrines from being taught. There is a terrible need in the body of Christ to unlearn some of these false teachings and learn the truth.

Let’s now rightly interpret what God meant, by vomiting us out of His mouth and then go on to explain these other verses. The word of God has to be interpreted through an understanding of God’s great desire to continually restore us to a place of wholeness with Him. This battle of wholeness cannot be communicated through God themes of Him losing His patience or getting fed up with His children. We stop God from loving us because we are being taught that, there are conditions being attached to it. This stops us from having a passion to love God and in turn love others as ourselves. In Rev 1:16, John the Apostle saw, “the figure of a man and in His right hand, He held seven stars, and from His mouth a sharp two-edged sword and His face was like the sun shining in full power at midday.” I want to focus in on this two-edged sword in the theme of this article.

In Hebrews chapter 4:12, Paul the Apostle states, “The word that God speaks is quick and full of power, making it active, operative and effective. It is sharper than any two edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line between soul and spirit and sifts and analyzes and judges the very thoughts and purposes of our hearts.

This can only take place if we take the time and allow the Holy Spirit to search our hearts.” Hebrews 1:3 says, “Jesus is the sole expression of the glory of God. The light being, the out raying of the Divine. He is the perfect imprint and the image of God’s nature upholding, maintaining and propelling the universe by His mighty “WORDS” which is His power. When God speaks, things happen. Let’s go back and see when God first spoke.

Genesis Chapter 1: Says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water and God said “let there be light” and God saw that the light was good and God divided the light from the darkness.” God spoke eight more times in Genesis and every time that He spoke, there was a created miracle that took place.

It’s the same thing, when God speaks His truth into our spiritual ear and we have God give us some new insight into His way of thinking. I see two processes going on here. God first has to show us that we have to unlearn something’s and then rebuild our inner being with what His real truths are. We must begin to realize that out of God’s spirit, out from His inner most being He spewed forth an extension of Himself and created life on the planet. Everywhere God speaks forth and it is received, it brings life.

He is the life giver. God doesn’t love us when He has a good day and not love us when He has a bad day. His whole nature and force of life as He exists is His love. When we interpret God’s word and believe that, He is fed up with us, it puts a wall up that stops God from spewing or speaking His life force, which is His word into our spirit and changing us to His way of thinking.

It goes on to say they were lukewarm because, they were not seeking God with zeal. The cares of life had them focusing on their earthly possessions. They were not hungering and thirsting after God because, they believed that they had arrived at some secure stature of life. The simplest example I can give on why God wanted them to be hot or cold is this.

In the physical on a cold day, there is nothing like a nice hot drink to warm you up and on a hot day, there is nothing like a nice ice cold drink to cool you off. When we look at this from a spiritual perspective. Since we are children of God and supposed to be going about our heavenly Fathers business. How are we supposed to be growing up spiritually with the Lord, let alone going about spreading the gospel of Christ and doing the same works that Jesus did, if we are not sensitive and prepared to give to others a hot or cold drink in the spiritual realm from the Lord, as the need prescribes. It’s obvious this will not happen, if our priorities are out of order and if we are not totally committed to walking in obedience to His will because of our lukewarm condition in seeking Him.

God wanted to warn and encourage them as to their condition. Let me try to describe their condition as God saw it. First of all let me say it really grieves the heart of God when his children continue to do their thing and not allow Him to protect them so they can live in security and peace. Please do not read this with the perspective that God has ought against you, if this is the condition that you might be in. It’s like a parent concerned for their children when there ill and need nursing.

They were carrying burdens of worry and care that God did not want them to carry. In reality, they were carry a yoke of unnecessary weight and had not taken on God’s yoke, which He describes in the scriptures as light, weightless and restful. They could also not receive God’s compassion and mercy.

Their concept of their physical wealth, compared with what God wanted to give them was a pittance. Along with that, they lived in bondage to a spirit of poverty. Always fearful that they might lose it and working harder, because they were not trusting in God for their daily bread.

They were prideful and had an over estimation of their own importance. Because of this condition, they had lost their humility and could not receive any thing from the Lord.

Their attitude was, what they had earned was from their own efforts. They had no concept of the grace of God and could not receive God’s unmerited favor. They had forgotten that God had covered them with a white robe and they were born again believers, but their relationship with Him was not intimate and being nurtured. God goes on to say in a loving way. Let me counsel you. He does not mean let me dictate to you to clean up your act. This counseling is a jointly conversation with Him of debate if necessary and reasoning together. The key to receiving from God can only happen through a want to interact with Him. He then goes on to tell us how to do this and empowers us to do it.

To repossess something they had lost and awake from a slumber they have been in and become active again in their relationship with Him.

This gold is His grace which empowers us to change our attitude to comply with doing what He just said.

The grace of God that He gives us will be tested and tried through the process we will be going through to change. It heals and destroys the spiritual disease, behavior and strongholds in our life that keeps us from all God wants to give us. There are things in our lives that have to be shaken loose, so the only thing left standing is God’s perfect will in us.

He goes on to say, if we allow this to take place, it will make us truly rich in God’s sight. This happens because, we open up our spirit to receive everything and more that God wants to give us for our every need, whenever we need it. We also will receive white clothes to clothe our nudity to keep our shame from being seen and eye salve to put on our eyes that we may really see. Let’s define this.

Our perception of ourselves has to be the same as God’s perception. When God the Father looks at us, He sees Jesus. Perfect in His sight. This concept of understanding has to be nurtured daily with our walk with God, because of all of the negative influence we are bombarded with daily. 11 Peter 3:14 tells us that Jesus is coming back for a church without spot and wrinkle and people who have a serene confidence in their relationship with Him. If we are living without spot and wrinkle, it will keep us free from fears, agitating passions and moral conflicts.

The nudity or shame talked about here is a concept that causes us to have painful feelings caused by a sense of guilt and unworthiness. It is the shame base nature that Jesus came to deliver us from when He gave His life for us on the cross. When we do not interact with the Holy Spirit, we can not experience God’s grace (unearned favor) and love.

Therefore, our mind and thinking processes keep us focused on our behavior, lack and us being sin conscious, rather then His total acceptance and desire to pour His gifts and grace out on us.

The definition of eye salve means to keep company with, join to, or be glued to. It also means a “poultice” which is a warm substance like a plaster that is put on the body in different areas to heal it. You will notice here God says that we must have this eye salve or poultice put on our spiritual eyes, if we are really going to see.

Let me give an example of this. In John chapter 9:1-7 as Jesus was walking along He noticed a blind man that was blind from birth. His disciples asked Him, Master who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind? You notice here that the disciples had a condemning thought rather then a loving thought. Jesus answer was, “neither was it his sin or his parent’s sin, but he was born blind so that I can manifest my mercy and healing power. I must be about my fathers business while I am in the world, because I am the light or life of the world. He then spit on the ground and made mud (poultice) with His saliva, and spread it as an ointment (the anointing) on the man’s eyes. He then told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. Therefore, he went and came back seeing. In the Hebrew concordance, the word Siloam where He told him to go and wash represents an attitude of (putting away one condition and embracing another condition.) Now pertaining to the blind man, his latter condition was a lot more favorable then his former condition.

Are we beginning to understand that it is a matter of life or death for us who call ourselves born again believers to live this life of allowing God to (anoint our spiritual eyes with the eye salve of.....(!Himself!)....and really begin to interpret His thoughts and purposes clearly without distortions of the truth. We know from scripture that the word Christ means, the anointed one. The anointing that is in Him is now also in us. It is a permanent gift given to us by God. It is the power of God working in our thought life and being, that arouses those heart-felt feelings that God wants to impart to us, to supply our needs and the needs of others. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit, and we need to interact with Him daily to understand life and how to be kingdom kids walking in the spirit.

Lets me recap and give a last thought. The scripture that we used, as a base for this newsletter is only one of many scriptures that are being read in different pulpits of born again churches that are based on conditional love themes and have been misinterpreted. It’s these kinds of teachings that, hinders God’s kids from becoming deep rooted and anchored in the love experiences in the Lord. Where the truth is not being communicated, the love of the Lord is not gaining strength. In Eph.4:15 Paul the Apostle states, “We should speak the truth in love so that we can grow up to the perfect stature of Christ.” If you look at this scripture it’s like a two edged sword. It says that if we want truth, we have to have the spirit of love motivating it. In addition, if we our functioning in the love of the Lord the only thing that will be coming out of our mouth is the truth. It is obvious that some of these distorted doctrines are not coming from a base of God’s loving attitude for His children.

Uncommitted hearts will never reveal to us the deep truths of God, only perseverance and a discipline to seek after God in our own daily travels through the market places of life will produce the real life of Christ in us.

The continual theme for our lives has to be us having a passion and a focused goal of allowing God to interact His total and all surrounding love into our lives. If we learn to walk in this inner circle with God, we then won’t be so easily deceived with false interpretations of scripture. Through my communication with people, I find that they have to begin to allow the Holy Spirit to use an eraser and erase the false interpretation of God’s word that they’re using to govern their lives, and allow the Holy Spirit to re-teach them the truth of how God really loves them.

Learning about God’s love should be an unending and the most rewarding experience that anchors our being. God’s love as we surrender to it will cause us to walk in peace and safety with a trust that supersedes our own human reasoning.