In the Lord be ever thankful.
In the Lord I will rejoice.
Look to God; do not be afraid.
Lift up your voices; the Lord is near.
Lift up your voices; the Lord is near.
That is the song I hear all the time right now, so you are going to have to learn it, at least for now.
In the Lord be ever thankful.
In the Lord I will rejoice.
Look to God; do not be afraid.
Lift up your voices; the Lord is near.
Lift up your voices; the Lord is near.
In the Lord be ever thankful.
In the Lord I will rejoice.
Look to God; do not be afraid.
Lift up your voices; the Lord is near.
Lift up your voices; the Lord is near.
This song gives the impression of somebody who is very fearful—or some people who are very fearful—but they see the Lord, their King, coming. Suddenly, they find themselves in boldness. They lift up their voices.
They have been afraid even to testify. They have been afraid to declare what they feel and what they know, but now they sense the Lord is near, and suddenly their mouths are unstopped. They lift up their voices: the Lord is near.
The nearer the Lord is to us, of course, the more our fear is reduced. There is a direct relationship. So let us sing it a few more times. Maybe I can get this one in your heart, so you will be humming it around. Zola, I know we will take this one over.
In the Lord be ever thankful.
In the Lord I will rejoice.
Look to God; do not be afraid.
Lift up your voices; the Lord is near.
Lift up your voices; the Lord is near.
One more time.
In the Lord be ever thankful.
In the Lord I will rejoice.
Look to God; do not be afraid.
Lift up your voices; the Lord is near.
Lift up your voices; the Lord is near.
One other little liturgical song. I do not think you need to sing it, but just listen.
Come, Holy Spirit, descend on us, descend on us.
We gather now in Jesus’ name.
Come, Bread of Heaven, descend on us, descend on us.
We gather now in You.
Come, Hand of Mercy, descend on us.
We gather now in Jesus’ name.
There is a precious Spirit in this place. There is the Bread of Heaven, our provision. There is manifest the Hand of Mercy, all from the presence of the Lord, in Whom we find fullness of joy and before Whose face there is no sense of shame.
We come to You, precious Lord, and we thank You for our fellowship together, our worship, and the testimony of hearts delighted in Your presence. Now, as we come and share the Word and testimony together, we pray that Your abiding presence may indeed feed us, the Bread of Heaven, and quicken us by the Spirit.
Touch us by Your Hand of Mercy. We gather now in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Actually, what I would like to do this morning is share testimony. I feel at home here with you, God’s people. I will share some things; hopefully they will be helpful to you. I do not know. I would like to share things that I am finding along the way.
I would like for us to read a whole chapter here in 1 Corinthians 2. I will be touching on some matters that I touched upon at Harvey Cedars, but in any case, may the Lord definitely be with us in this time.
And when I came to you, brethren, I came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.
And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:
that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
Yet we speak wisdom among them that are full-grown: yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nought:
but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory:
which none of the rulers of this world knoweth: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
But as it is written,
Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not,
And which entered not into the heart of man,
Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love Him.
But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.
But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God.
Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; combining spiritual things with spiritual words.
Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged.
But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man.
For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.
Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you.
But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and I will know, not the word of them that are puffed up, but the power.
For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.
What will ye? Shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?
For I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and deed,
in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Spirit; so that from Jerusalem, and round about even unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.
Now, I want to share a testimony with you this morning that has to do with something that has been a continual thought in my heart. It has to do with this simple word in John 16: when the Spirit of truth comes, He will lead us into all reality.
This is the way the Spirit spoke to me several years ago and set me on a path to try to understand: what is spiritual reality? I hunger for that and long for that. I would just like to testify to you today that it continues to be a sort of scene that continually brings me back.
Several years ago, I was studying and preparing to do a series of messages on the wisdom of Jesus as seen in the Gospel of Matthew—where He dealt with the Sadducees, the Herodians, the Pharisees, and those guys. Something grabbed me about this matter of wisdom that I have not been able to let go of.
That was years ago, and yet that scene continually comes back to me, as if the Lord is saying, “I want you to learn wisdom.” I keep saying, “I lack wisdom, and I want to pursue this wisdom.”
The Lord is doing something in my life that is so exciting to me, because He is putting something together in a formative way that is hard to explain. Naturally, I am going to try to explain it.
It has something to do with connecting the matter of the kingdom, the matter of power, the matter of wisdom, and the matter of reality. Somehow, the Lord is connecting these things together in a way that I cannot quite explain, but I want to sort of explain because this is becoming something that is forming my life. It seems to be redefining my sense of ministry, my sense of life, and my priorities.
I was never much of an artist, unlike Dan and some of you here who are so artistic. But, as far as actually drawing something, the Lord is being gracious to me with a connect-the-dot kind of drawing. He is connecting these things: wisdom, reality, power, and the King.
Now, I, like you, have been allowed by the Lord to taste the hors d’oeuvres of these matters. I have tasted, and frankly been spoiled, by the light of the Lord. I have tasted the kingdom, tasted the power, tasted the wisdom, and tasted the reality—and it spoils you.
One of the things that is amazing to me when I visit fellowships—whether it is a new little gathering like Russ has up there in Connecticut, or one that has been going on for a while—is that I am spoiled by the reality of the Lord Jesus in our midst.
Even though, maybe on the scale of the realiometer, we are way on the low side, still, whenever I get to thinking, “Ah, we are all a bunch of fakers, and I do not know what I am doing, and they do not know what they are doing either,” the Lord sends me back to some other place. Then I say, “Whew!”
When I deal with young people, for example, there is a lot of reality there. There is honesty and openness. There is a preciousness. I have been spoiled.
So, like all the rest of you, now I want to pursue. I feel a hunger to pursue. But my hunger does not come from a sense of lack or a sense of need, although I know I lack wisdom. It comes because I have tasted something, and the prospect of fullness is inviting.
I want to know the fullness of these things we are talking about: the kingdom, wisdom, reality, and power. The Lord has been leading me through a whole series of understandings, where one thing is added upon another to help me understand.
I want to share a level that I see, something ahead of me that I have perceived but not laid hold of. I believe I have been laid hold of by God, and I am trying to lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of. You know what I am saying. Somebody else said that before me.
I am pursuing something. At this present stage, the Lord’s vocabulary comes to me. My vocabulary is sometimes quite unique, and I am sure that you have to strain a lot of what I say and bring it into the reality where you can understand it. But this matter of wisdom is coming to me presently in this form. Please bear with me.
What is the highest level of spiritual wisdom? The Spirit seems to be saying to me in these days that the highest level of spiritual wisdom is just doing the kingdom.
In other words, we look and see that wisdom is more than words. It is more than understanding. It is a doing.
What is the highest spiritual wisdom? I look at 1 Corinthians 2, and I see spiritual wisdom there. I see it in Paul’s life—not just by the things he says, but by who he is.
This man Paul is continually a goad in my side because he is doing the kingdom. The stuff we talk about, this guy is doing.
He says, “Now, when I came to you, I did not come to you with fancy wisdom.” Maybe we can excel in fancy wisdom. I might spin you into some kind of confusion this morning, talking about these matters and how they are all interrelated. But Paul says, “When I came to you, I did not come to you with fancy wisdom. I came to you in demonstration and power.”
When you looked at Paul, you said, “There is the kingdom. There is the power of God, the reality of God, the wisdom of God, the love of God. There it is.”
I feel like the Lord’s exhortation in my life is saying, “Do it. Just shut up and do it. We have a lot of talk. I want you to enter into the doings of the kingdom.” That is the highest wisdom. That is higher than words. It is higher than thinking. It is real wisdom.
When I thought about that, the Lord arrested me on that one, and I said, “I am guilty. Put me in jail.” Then the Lord had me look around at those in whom I had seen spirituality and heard spiritual wisdom, and I realized that in those vessels I had actually seen more than I had heard.
Some had found this secret and had been able to enter, in some measure, into the reality of the kingdom, power, and wisdom. They were doing it. I said to myself, “Lord, I want to do it.”
This real wisdom—this highest wisdom—is more than words of wisdom. Notice in 1 Corinthians 4:20 what Paul says: “The kingdom of God is not words; it is power.” How do you like that?
The kingdom of God is not words; it is power. He says that in the context of people who have become arrogant and are using hot, inflated words. “They have got the words,” he says. “Well, I am coming. We are not dumb. The kingdom is coming. You will see power.”
Some people can talk and talk, but I am doing the doing. So, this wisdom is more than just words.
Now, I want to say something, and I want you just to hold on, because this wisdom involves revelation. But I want to say that this wisdom is higher than merely knowing the Lord.
I was wanting to help the young people learn that little song: “Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You, there is no greater thing.” That is absolutely true. But I want to make a distinction for just a moment between knowing Jesus in a shallow revelation of Jesus, and knowing Jesus in a full knowledge of Jesus through experience. There is a difference between those two.
Sometimes we delight in standing on the borderlands and looking at this beautiful Lord that we have, as the Spirit reveals Him to us, without entering into a communion with Him where Paul talks about full knowledge.
There is that Greek word for full knowledge, epignōsis, which means a knowledge entered into by experience. That is why the word is used to talk about the intimate relationship of a man and a woman. To know somebody in that way is to experience oneness with a person, not merely to see it before you.
This wisdom is more than just knowing Jesus from that superficial level. The real wisdom is to know Jesus as our wisdom in terms of an experience of walking with Him in communion and walking with Him in co-working.
It must be no accident that here in Richmond, more has probably been learned about our precious Lord in practical walking-out because you have decided to co-work with Him in terms of this gigantic conference. In the process of that co-working, you learn so much about the Lord.
When we talk about knowing the Lord, some people speak as if Jesus were some static person up there—as if He were some Buddha enthroned up there, and we see a revelation of Him, His magnitude, and His omniscience, and just worship Him as if He were some sort of static being. He has come to rest. He is sedentary. He is retired.
The fact of the matter is that this Jesus, Whom Paul was coming to know in fullness, was that Jesus Who was walking, shaking the world, and bringing in the kingdom, even in His exalted, resurrected state. Paul was discovering Jesus in the power of His resurrection. You see what I am saying?
There is a knowledge of Jesus that only comes when we step over the threshold and enter into a communion walk that involves more than communion in worship. It involves a communion that includes co-working with a resurrected Lord. That is how we enter into real wisdom.
A few years ago, I was looking up the word threshold. Somehow the Lord seemed to put that word on my mind. One of the definitions was the aeronautical definition of threshold.
A threshold is the moment when you are on the runway and have to decide whether you are going to throttle up or cut it down. At the threshold.
In my life, the Lord has convicted me of this a hundred times. A hundred times, I have gone to the edge of the kingdom runway, to the place where the rubber gets off the ground, and said, “Let us circle back around and see if we see Jesus again.”
My Lord is giving me the old Nike commercials. “Just do it.” There is our fear, and there is where reality sometimes catches me short. So I circle back and do some more talking: “We are marching in the kingdom. We are working in the kingdom.” Then my throttle goes down.
But airplanes were not made merely to go up and down runways. We know that. The Lord is trying to deal with my heart.
There is a difference between Ephesians 1, where Paul prays that we could have a spirit of wisdom and revelation to enter into the full knowledge of Jesus, and Ephesians 3, where he says we gather together, the Spirit strengthens us, and we stand together and sense the height, depth, width, and breadth of the love of Christ.
There is experience together. There is a fuller wisdom there. I may receive a revelation as a Christian concerning the magnitude of Jesus and find out amazing things about Him by the Spirit that I never knew before, when He was merely a Savior. But when we stand together with the saints, co-working together, and enter into kingdom reality, we see a height, depth, width, and breadth that we can only comprehend together with all the saints.
There is something too large waiting for us. The Lord is bidding me to come.
I shared this helpful truth that Christian Chen kind of snuck into me over Labor Day. He shared a series of messages up in Queens, but at the very start he said something in passing that stayed with me. I confess I did not hear too much of the rest of the messages, but that first section stayed with me so much that I have been thinking about it.
In his introduction, he said that the books of Solomon need to be seen as a whole corpus because they speak to us as a total, regarding the levels of our life. He shared some things, and then I added some things, so I do not know where he stopped and I started. But here is where I got this.
The books of Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon together show us something of the depth of the wisdom of God.
We start in Ecclesiastes. This is wisdom under the sun. This is the experience of life that we go through: working, having children, having problems, trying to do things, trying to find meaning, and all this kind of stuff. This is all under the sun—or, as our brother Christian said, all in the outer court.
It is necessary wisdom. We need to have the wisdom of life. We cannot be foolish. But if this wisdom remains at that level, it becomes vanity of vanities.
I am reading a wonderful book that shows the Hebrew meaning of this term, vanity of vanities, used so often in Ecclesiastes. The Hebrew word is related to Abel: vapor, vanity. Abel was named with that same word.
According to Jeremiah and Jonah, there are idols of vanity. In this world, we try to find meaning by grabbing hold of idols of vanity. They seem important to us, but the issue of them is dust.
Solomon checked out women, making money, doing great projects, wisdom, religion, and all these things. He said, “Do not get too involved in them. They only lead to nowhere.” No matter what idol of vanity I tried to grab, it was vanity.
Under the sun, that is exactly where we are. There is a wisdom, but unless it is brought into revelation, it becomes merely idols of vanity.
The second level is the book of Proverbs, where we see ourselves coming into the holy place, as it were. Under the lampstand of God, we see revelation. Here we see revelation of Jesus. Jesus becomes wisdom to us, and we enter into a revelation that opens up the will of God for us.
The book of Proverbs is a delightful revelation of the will of God as a living way. The Word of God becomes alive to us.
Trust in the Lord with all thy heart,
And lean not upon thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge Him,
And He will direct thy paths.
Those who trust in the Lord with all their heart and lean not on their own understanding have risen above living under the sun. Now they live in the Word of God, and the will of God opens up. What a wonderful thing to have a living way set before us.
But if we remain only in Proverbs, we still fall short of the Song of Solomon, in which we find a wisdom that has to do with love’s communion—the wisdom that comes out of an experience of living with the King.
How do we learn wisdom more: by people telling us what is wise, or by living with the King? Which way do you think you will get life?
There is a third level of wisdom, and this level has to do with the doing of it. That is why we are tickled by some of the things Eric Fischbacher wrote down in his little thing. He has a way of touching the doing of things that must be done in union with the Lord.
When we get into the Song of Songs, we have entered into what our brother Christian called the Holy of Holies. Here we find a wisdom that indeed is from above.
Back in 1 Corinthians 2, some things have been speaking to me regarding wisdom, and I would like to try to share them with you. The first is this: the Holy Spirit needs a foundation upon which to build.
Notice 1 Corinthians 2:13. Paul is talking about wisdom for the mature—the spiritual wisdom into which the Holy Spirit is building us—and he says:
These things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual things with spiritual words.
Whatever translation you have, it really says, “interpreting spiritual with spiritual,” or “combining spiritual with spiritual.”
Whenever you see a phrase in the New Testament such as “spiritual with spiritual,” “faith to faith,” “grace to grace,” or “glory to glory,” there is an implication in that double usage: first, you have to have a foundation; then you can build upon the foundation.
When our gospel brings us from faith to faith, it brings us first to an initial foundation of faith, and then faith is built upon that faith. There is a building up.
It is the same with interpreting spiritual with spiritual. The Holy Spirit has to find some initial foundation upon which to build spiritual wisdom. In other words, there has to be some analogy in our understanding upon which He can build.
If I were to talk to you about God being our Father, and you had never had an earthly father, you would have a hard time understanding what that means. If we were to talk about being the family of God and you were never part of a family, you would have a hard time understanding, because you do not have an experiential basis.
The precious Lord has the Holy Spirit working in a triangular series of vectors to bring us into wisdom. The triangle is this:
These three working together bring us into wisdom. The more we see of the Lord Jesus, the more we understand life, people, our situation, our calling, our future, and our hope. It all rests in a revelation of Jesus.
But this revelation of Jesus does not happen in isolation or by osmosis, as if it just comes breaking through the skylines. The Word of God is something we study. As we study, it gives us a basis, and then the Holy Spirit can reveal Jesus upon the basis of the Word. These things are then revealed into our experience.
The Lord builds wisdom upon wisdom by the movement of these three things. He takes our experience and brings Jesus into our experience. Or we study the Word of God and say, “I do not understand that,” and then two months later something happens, and we say, “Ah, now I understand it.”
There is this wonderful engineering work of the Holy Spirit, where He takes our circumstances and experience, makes things come alive, and fills us with wisdom regarding circumstances through the Word of God and a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Paul says, “I pray that you may have a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus.” This is key to wisdom. We all confess, as it says in 1 Corinthians, that Jesus has become for us the wisdom of God.
The Holy Spirit, in doing this, works on all three levels of wisdom. This was somewhat surprising to me, because the Lord wants us to enter into a wisdom that is real wisdom.
There is all sorts of so-called spiritual wisdom that is false wisdom—super-spiritual wisdom, Gnostic wisdom—afloat within the church today. There are all kinds of so-called wisdom, but it is not grounded in reality.
The thing that surprises me is how often the Lord brings us under the sun in order to learn wisdom that brings us into the heavenlies. In other words, the Lord wants us to live under the sun. There is some purpose in that.
Under the sun, the wisdom developed is that the Holy Spirit, as circumstantial engineer, has to convince us about certain things. It can only be done under the sun.
We Christians have a tendency to want to get out from under the sun. Once we become Christians, we say, “Please let me live up here somewhere. Is there not some kind of monastery I can live in? I would be very happy.”
Most Christians, in their early days when they really see the preciousness of Jesus, become ostriches. Their necks go right in the sand: “I do not want to see any of it.” Or we form cocoons and say, “Oh, now I am safe. The Lord will protect me.”
Oh no, we do not. Down you go into experiences where the Holy Spirit says, “I have got to engineer something in you. I want to convince you that the world is impermanent and filled with idols of vanity.”
Think of how people have wandered away from the Lord through idols of vanity. I remember at seminary how many young students were completely taken with the values of psychology and ran off into an idol of vanity, thinking they could change their Christian brethren by psychology.
The Lord says, “Okay, good. That is right. Those who are foolish enough to try it—try it and see that it does not work.” Such idols of vanity.
Listen: we talk like we are spiritual, but most of us live down under the sun. The fact of the matter is that the Lord is pointing out to me how often my ministry is ministry under the sun. You can whip up a pretty good message under the sun—lots of Scriptures and stuff. It all makes sense. Scriptural prescriptions: you have a problem here, do this.
But ministry under the sun is not what the Lord wants, and yet He has to bring us back there. The more we are convinced of the impermanence of life under the sun, the more we find real wisdom in the heavenly places, seated with Christ.
I was talking to Shirley from Memorial yesterday. She came up to me and told me about her son who has terminal cancer. She said, “I just wanted to tell you because you would understand these things, because your son died.”
Why is it that the Lord does not protect us? Is it not that we would make gods of our family, gods of our jobs, gods of our circumstances, gods of our American economy, and gods of these various idols of vanity?
He keeps plunging us back into a reality that confirms to us all the more that we need to be in the heavenlies. This living under the sun becomes a necessity because it is the foundation of experience upon which the Spirit can build us into something greater.
Without such discovery, without the Lord continually plunging your nose into that workaday world where everything seems cyclical and going nowhere, there is no force that rushes you into resurrection life. So He keeps us here.
Whenever, in our Christian desire for unreality, we form a cocoon existence, it does not demand faith. We get protected and comfy, and everything is all right: “God is protecting me, taking care of me, everything is fine.” But the Lord has to smash the cocoon. Reality is: you live by faith.
If there is anything under the sun that we hold on to as an idol, it is a possibility of some area in which we could find offense in the Lord. So He pries the hands open.
How we praise God. The Holy Spirit is the greatest engineer of circumstances known to man. There is no life that will escape the dealing of our precious Spirit, where He will convince us by many infallible proofs of the transiency of this life and the meaninglessness of it if that is where we take our source of supply.
He wants to lead us up, turn us away from our nesting tendencies by the ascent of faith. In the end, of course, we realize that life is not lived under the sun. We get under the Son—S-O-N.
There we find life in the heavenlies, and we enter into this second stage, this proverbial wisdom, where the Word of God becomes wonderful and precious to us and revelation begins to invade our life.
When I got saved and got into ministry, as it were, I did a lot of stuff under the sun. I was busy under the sun. I made sure our church was busy under the sun. We were all exhausted under the sun, to tell you the truth.
I will never forget when the Lord met me at my Waterloo, where Napoleon—that is, Stephen Kaung—came down to Raleigh, North Carolina. He started speaking about the revelation of Jesus, which I had never heard before; the revelation of the church, which I had never clearly seen; and the necessity of the cross, which I had never seen before.
I remember 1975, because at that time the sparks began to fly as I began to enter in, at least from afar, to see this second level of wisdom: revealed wisdom, seeing Jesus as He really was.
I was reading the Word: “Wow. Oh yeah, that is true. Oh, I never saw that.” It was like sparks were going on. Experience was confirming what the Word of God was saying, which was confirming what the revelation of Jesus was. Boom, boom—I got into that triangle. I tell you, like the Bermuda Triangle, I almost never got out.
It only took away my ministry and my life and led to some years of testing. It was worth every second. Oh, the Jesus I saw. Nobody compares with Him.
So I got spoiled too. Now I would rather speak to a precious assembly of folks who are searching after realities than to some big old working-under-the-sun places I used to speak at. I just want to be where the Lord is showing something.
But I am also seeing lately that the Corinthians were sort of there too, and Paul was not satisfied. The Corinthians were not behind in knowledge. That does not merely mean knowledge under the sun. They also were not behind in revelation knowledge. They had seen a lot and entered into much.
They understood calling, ministry, and gifting. They were behind in no gift. Paul had to admit these things were so. But he says there is a deeper wisdom: we have to get to the doing of it, not merely the talking of it.
A revelation of Jesus and a revelation of the church can lead to an extravagant amount of words, and even a certain arrogance that breeds itself from knowing words that other people do not know.
The Lord is saying to me, “Dana, do not talk the words. Do it. Do church. Do kingdom.”
Well, let us have a special conference where we talk about witnessing. Would you all like that? We can talk about it, then I will go home and you will go home. This is easy. But doing the kingdom in terms of the gospel?
Remember what Paul said in Romans 15: “I am doing the gospel, and there are signs and wonders and sparks. Things are going on. I am in there.” Not merely on the outside thinking about it, going to a clinic next year, or talking about it once in a while. We always say, “Let us pray about it.”
Paul says, “I am praying, but I am also in it.” There is more to learn when you are in it and praying.
Paul is trying to bring the Corinthians forward. What is that arrogance in 1 Corinthians 4? It is the arrogance of saints who know how to discern the difference between one ministry and another, and this has caused division instead of unity in the body of Christ.
Some are saying, “Oh, I like Apollos. Oh, how he can speak on revelation and the purpose of God. He gives messages and poems, he is so rhetorical, and sometimes he even bursts out in a gift of prophecy. Ooh, I like Apollos. He is my man.”
Then the guy from the other group stands up and says, “No, no, no. Paul is the man because he does it. I know sometimes he bumbles and rants and raves, and sometimes he speaks so long people fall out of windows. But this guy—he is a doer. We like a doer. This man does it.”
These people had come into a certain knowledge of what they called anointing. There are always folks who recognize Apollos’s anointing but not Paul’s, and some who recognize Paul’s but not Peter’s, and so on. We have our own slants on anointing.
Paul says, “The reality is that God has given to you Paul, Apollos, Peter, and everybody, for a fullness. But you would rather pick and choose a narrowness according to your own inclinations.”
There is a necessity for spiritual wisdom that enters into communion with the Lord and recognizes how large He is, so that you can receive all He has for us.
The Corinthians, with all their knowledge, had a hard time doing that. In 1 Corinthians 8, there was another dispute over eating meat offered to idols.
There were three groups. One group was living by their conscience under the sun: “This is not right. Eating meat offered to idols just sounds wrong. I cannot do it. My conscience.” But they were living under the sun.
Then there was a second group who knew. Knowledge puffs up. These people knew that it makes no difference where you get your meat from: just ask God to bless it. “I am free, I am free, I am free. It is from the idol temple. I am free in Jesus. I am not bound by the law. I am not bound by legalism. I can do whatever I want.”
Paul says, “Maybe you are free, but I am free, and I became a slave so that I could help everybody in the body of Christ.” There is one step beyond knowledge, and that is love.
Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth.
Why not join in that communion of the Song of Solomon, communion with your brothers and sisters that would never offend them, even if you understand a freedom that they do not understand?
The Corinthians were struggling with that. Some of them would rather stand around and talk about how free they were. And was not knowledge coming back to club them in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14? They had so many gifts that they were stepping over each other, carrying on, standing on their heads talking. There was no order, and things were becoming divisive.
Paul says, “Okay, you have gifts. I admit it. Where is the love? What good is it if it is clang and bong? That is simple without love. It causes a mess.”
How about some spiritual wisdom? Paul says, frankly, “I speak in tongues more than you all,” but he never went fresh into some assembly, “Bibbity-bobbity-boo,” carrying on. Paul had the restraint of a love whose only desire was to edify, not to show off.
Paul somehow had a sense of what was appropriate. I wonder how he had the sense of what was appropriate. Some people are always appropriate in their ministry, and then there are folks like me. But I want to learn. I want to learn how to be appropriate in every situation.
How did Paul get appropriate? Did he read Amy Vanderbilt’s lessons on spiritual manners? He had entered into a communion with the Lord Jesus where he learned what to share, what to do, and what to say.
Is it not amazing that Paul can say in 1 Corinthians, “I have wisdom for the mature; I would surely try to share it”? Yet Paul says, “When I came to you, I could not share it.”
Here he sits with a whole mountain of stuff which eye has never seen, ear has never heard, and which has never entered into the heart of man—things that are too wonderful to speak. He says, “I cannot share from that mountain. I have to share some milk. Here you go. Take a little milk.”
He had a whole mountain of the riches of Christ. He was standing at the foothills of the mountain of Jesus—huge. He saw Him as the source of all creation, but he could not share that with the Corinthians. They were not ready to know it.
They said, “Give me a bottle. Tell me how my sins are forgiven. Tell me what a good boy I am. Pat me on the back when I share a little spiritual gift.”
Paul says, “What you guys need right now is the cross all the way through. If you are ever going to hear these secrets I have, right now what you need is the cross.”
So the Spirit is going to engineer a little trip back under the sun. I always picture a hazy sky and a lot of clouds. There you go, back down under there, until you realize the vanity of gifts without love and the vanity of choosing one over another instead of accepting God’s fullness.
Then He brings us back up through the clouds again, and we see things more clearly, having been more convinced by the Spirit’s engineering of the things that really count.
When we get into that deepest wisdom and talk about the things that really count, we always end up talking about loving Jesus Christ with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving our brothers and sisters as ourselves.
This is the deepest wisdom. But it is something that is done, not just something that is talked about.
We come to this threshold where we see the Lord Jesus, see calling, and see ministry. It is incredibly difficult to step over this threshold, and it is just the doing of it.
There is a cross involved. Not only is there a cross involved, but there is a faith-taking of resurrection life.
This burdens my soul so deeply. I long to see in my own life and in the life of the body of Christ a power of the Spirit that is real—not fanciful, frivolous, or shallow.
Some of the things called the power of God today, frankly, are way back from the threshold of the kingdom of God. It is foolishness. It is idols of vanity, frankly.
But the real power of God—what is it? Christ, yes, I know these things. Here is the real power of God: when folks can just do it, then you have got the real power.
When folks are not merely talking about the need for shepherding, but shepherding; when people are not merely talking about how we should witness, but witnessing; when people are not merely speaking about vision, but being obedient to vision.
This is where I think we need the resurrection life that is in Jesus. That is where power is. It is not merely the gift of the Spirit. I have tasted and seen these things too, and it is precious to know that the Lord desires to give us these various gifts.
But to live in resurrection life, in union with the Lord, in such a way that we can just do it and not merely talk about it—that is reality. That is reality.
Sometimes we get so unreal that we think we are in reality. That is when the Lord brings you back to examine yourself under the sun again, through some calamity or something that does not work out.
Just about the time the saints in Huntington say, “Okay, we have got the wagon train. Everybody ready? Everybody hitched up? Everybody ready to go? Forward!” Somebody’s wheel goes off—wagon three—and we get stopped again.
Back down under the sun. “Why are we held up now? We were ready to cross the threshold.” Now, were we? Everybody says, “Oh yeah, we were ready.” Well, what happened? “I do not know. We went backwards.”
It is because we have a lot to talk about, just the doing of it. The wise man does not talk; he walks.
When somebody finds themselves on this kind of holy ground of just doing it, there is a union with Jesus. It is not merely union with Him in static fellowship, but union with Him in co-working. This is the doing of spiritual wisdom in the kingdom of God.
Now, we are not talking about “just do it” in a natural way. I am not talking about being the church of Ephesus. They were doing it without love. We cannot do it that way.
They were doing it, but they were not really doing it because they were not doing it with first love. We are not talking about the church of Sardis. They were knowing it, but they were not doing it. They had a name and reputation that they were alive, but they were not doing it. Somehow they had stopped doing it.
Nor are we talking about the church of Laodicea. They were doing things, but where were they doing them? All under the sun. Just a church under the sun—a natural church.
You can have natural church: sing songs, have a study, have a prayer, all go home. We can all be under the sun. We can live the Laodicean life. No, no, no. Let us not merely do it under the sun.
I see a vision of the church of Philadelphia. The Lord says, “I have opened a door before you”—a threshold. “I know you are weak, but you have held on to My word. You are in that context upon which I can work.”
“You have seen Me. You are listening to Me. You have the Word of God before you. You have your experience. You know your own weakness. You do not trust in yourself, but you are in that triangle.”
“I want to reveal to you the exceeding greatness of My power toward you who believe, the power which was able to raise Jesus from the dead and set Him in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power.”
Philadelphia stands at the threshold. We do not know if they went through, but they had their invitation into reality, where this exceeding greatness of His power is not merely ours for a view, a revelation, or a perusal. It is that we might know the exceeding greatness of His resurrection power in our experience and be able to do it, because He is doing it in us—the doing that comes out of union.
I find that to be what the Lord is saying: “Dana, do you seek wisdom? Enough of the words. You come and find My life in union with you in such a way that you can do it.” There is reality.
You touch a saint like that, you find real wisdom. You touch an assembly like that, you find real life. This is where the Lord is putting it together for me, linking by connect-the-dots: the kingdom, wisdom, reality, power.
That is where I am. May the Lord help all of us to get across the threshold—not merely be talkers, but enter into such communion with Him that we are able to do what the Lord tells us to do. Lord, help. Let us pray.
Lord, I thank You that You set everybody on the way. These things we have tasted and touched—I know everyone has. We have not attained to that for which we were attained by You.
Lord, place a longing in our hearts that, whatever level we tend to be at, we will not be satisfied there. We see there is a greater reality whenever we look and see the Lord Jesus Himself and how He did the kingdom.
As the King Himself, He was the embodiment, the ministry, and the life of the kingdom. When we see men like the apostle Paul, we see this incarnate wisdom, as it were. He was doing while others only talked.
Lord, we desire to enter into a fuller measure of the experiential, full knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord. We know that He has become wisdom to us. We pray it would be redemptive wisdom, liberating wisdom, powerful wisdom, and manifest wisdom.
May we be what we say the church is. May we allow the Lord to be Who we say He is. May our worship, prayer, ministry, and fellowship all be touched by a reality that finds us in the kingdom, experiencing real life before You.
O Lord, forgive us for the many times when we have formed unrealistic cocoons and imagined that we were living in reality. Thank You for busting them up, bringing us back to our senses, helping us to see how short this life is, and helping us to see that we cannot count on anybody being permanent except You.
Lord, we look past all that. We do not take offense when we see a sister fall away, a brother held down, or something reversed. We realize that any man, at any moment, can be blown away under the sun.
But we live in the heavens. There we see a consistency to the ministrations of the Spirit on our behalf. We see that there is a goal and a purpose at the end of all this dealing.
We accept and embrace the necessary dealings of the cross to enable us to move across that threshold and throttle up into what You have for us.
O Lord, help us to live in a kingdom community of life, power, wisdom, and reality. We pray in Jesus’ name.