Encountering the glory (part 2)

If someone walked into my church on a Sunday morning and told me he or she was there to “manifest the glory of God,” I admit I might be inclined pretty quickly to provide a list of other churches in the community they could attend.

However, the fact is that Paul does make this very clear statement: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Paul is alluding to the experience of Moses, who had to veil his face when coming from the Lord’s presence because he did not want people gazing on the light. But now the situation is different. Our faces are unashamedly unveiled. There is no need to hide the evidence of God’s presence. On the contrary, we are to advertise it! But how we do this is not through an outward light show. Instead, the glory of God shines through lives that look like Jesus.

Why am I so certain about this? Precisely because of Paul’s statement. He says plainly that the glory of God is manifest in our transformation as men and women into the likeness of Christ. It is not beyond God’s ability to perform supernatural signs, but the glory is not in the signs. That is why it I have such a hard time when people report findings of glory clouds, gold dust, angel feathers (?) and the like, and then see in these supernatural signs the true manifestation of the glory of God. When we begin to look like Jesus in our lives, that is when the glory comes.

Three things are important about this transformation.

First, unlike with Moses, it is for all of us. It is the plan and purpose of God for every Christian to encounter the presence of the Lord, and to be changed by it.

Second, it is passive. We do not and cannot transform ourselves. We are being transformed by him. Our part is to yield, to give him permission, to submit, to let him have his way. Only he can bring the change.

Third, it is progressive. This is expressed by the way the Greek phrases it, which means: “we are in the process of being continually transformed.” Manifesting God’s glory in our lives is not a dramatic event. It is not a road to Damascus moment. Paul was converted on the road to Damascus, but was still, many years later, in his own words, “being transformed.” Transformation is a process that lasts our whole lives.

At Pentecost, the temple of God fell out of heaven to earth. The same Holy Spirit who came at Pentecost is at work in your life and mine today. His job is to make us look like Jesus. He transforms our moral and spiritual appearance so that it becomes like his. And as that happens, the glory begins to appear.

Paul wrote a short commentary on the same subject elsewhere. It begins with the words: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,” and it ends with these: “the greatest of these is love.”

Signs may come and go, but as Elijah found out, the glory of God did not reach its highest form in them (see my post, “The thin silence of God,” published May 23/16).

To bear God’s image and to show his glory is our highest destiny and our greatest call.

Encountering the glory

The goal of our lives as Christians is nothing less than to manifest the glory of God. How we do this is explained by a detour into the meaning of the word “glory.”

The Greek word the Bible uses for glory was originally a word meaning appearance. This word figuratively came to refer to our reputation -- how others look at us. We have a physical appearance, but we also have a deeper character appearance or reputation. Behind our outward appearance is the inner core or essence of who we are as a person. Our essence makes an impact. The impact, multiplied over and over by our words and actions, creates our reputation -- what people think of us. This is our moral or character “appearance.” It could be a good appearance or a bad appearance, depending on our life and character.

When the Bible uses this word in relation to God, it takes on a different meaning.  This outward “appearance” or “reputation” of God, his utter perfection, is totally different from ours. It raises the idea of “appearance” to a whole new level. And so in English we began to translate the word as applied to God by a different word -- glory.

As we become like Christ, we ourselves begin to carry a measure of his glory. How? By the fact that we begin to look like him. Our appearance begins to become like his appearance. Some people in the Christian world make a terrible mistake by identifying glory with someone who comes with a dramatic prophecy or apparent word or supernatural manifestation from God, or perhaps someone with a dynamic personality, or someone claiming to be blessed with material prosperity.

This we foolishly call glory, and we follow such people -- and become the blind leading the blind.  But true glory is manifested in people whose essence is so filled with the Holy Spirit that the Spirit is able to produce the love, goodness, faithfulness, joy, peace, long suffering and gentleness of Jesus Christ in our character and our actions. Our appearance becomes more like his appearance.  This is the glory of God in us, for it is ultimately created by God himself through his Spirit.

If we are going to be glory-seekers, this is the glory we should seek.

Next week, a little more on the same subject…

Surrender releases the supernatural

Joseph found peace in the midst of difficult circumstances. This peace allowed him a perspective on the sovereignty of God. Years later, this perspective allowed him to sum up to his brothers his whole harsh pilgrimage in these words: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).

Joseph’s battle was not won the day Pharaoh released him from prison. It was won in the depths of the dungeon when he surrendered to the sovereignty of God. He took that tremendous leap of faith to believe that ultimately God was in charge of his life, working things together to accomplish a higher purpose.

When Joseph surrendered himself to the sovereignty of God, God released his supernatural power. Ultimately, in God’s timing, it was that supernatural power, manifested in Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s own dreams, that released him from prison and brought him in a single day from prisoner in a jail to leader of the nation.

As we read to the end of the story, we find out how God raised Joseph out of prison, placed him at the right hand of Pharaoh, and eventually restored his relationship with his family, all the while fulfilling the two original dreams God had given him those many years before. The road to that fulfillment was not at all what the teenaged boy had imagined it to be, yet by the end of it, he could say that it was all fashioned by God for good. Suffering was an integral part of the process. You could almost say it was the process. Joseph was refined and purified by the suffering he endured.

Sometimes we suppose we can have charisma without character. Joseph’s story shows that if necessary, God will suppress the charisma until he develops the character that can carry the charisma to his glory rather than to the glory of man.  Have we truly given God permission to do what he wants with our lives? Have we reached a place of peace and surrender to God’s sovereign plan and purpose for us? If so, we will start to see the power of God flow through us, but in our weakness, not in our strength (2 Corinthians 12:9). He will take us and use us as instruments of his purpose, even if that purpose takes us up a hill like Calvary where, as Joseph did many years before, another man surrendered himself into the hands of his Father, knowing that whatever man or the enemy meant for evil, God intended for good.

This is the victory of Joseph’s faith, a faith forged in the heat of terrible tribulation, through the death of all his dreams, and in the midst of a battle against soul-destroying bitterness. By the grace of God Joseph won that battle, and was raised from prison and seated at the right hand of the throne of Pharaoh. How much more today can we do the same, we who have before us Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2); we who have working so mightily within us the same power by which this Jesus was raised from the dead and seated in the heavens, where now he has taken up his authority to rule.

Joseph’s story is for us. God is still bringing good out of it every time someone reads it and understands its message. Take hold of it for yourself. Allow God to take you up out of your prison and into the revelation of his will, and show you the certainty of his purpose for your life.

The greatest battle you'll ever fight

There’s lots of battles you will face in life. Let me tell you what I think is the greatest.

To do it, I’ll turn to one of my greatest Biblical heroes. Joseph faced a cavalcade of terrible circumstances. He was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, unjustly imprisoned for a long period of time, and then forgotten by Pharaoh’s butler who should have appealed for his freedom. Yet his greatest battle was not the fight for freedom, it was the fight for a right response to the injustice done to him.

Joseph had lost a lot. He had no freedom, no money, no wife, no family, no job. When we are denied what we want out of life – job, money, relationship, health and so on – we often become bitter, either at those who have stood in our way, cheated us or treated us wrongly, or at God himself.

From a human perspective, Joseph had reason to be angry with God. It was God who had got him into this mess by giving him these dreams. It was God who got his hopes up. Where was God when his brothers sold him into slavery? Even after that, he continued to honour God by refusing the advances of Potiphar’s wife – and where did that get him? He had that incredible prophetic word over the butler and it led to nothing. Even if Joseph got over those hurdles by acknowledging that the God who had twice saved his life should not be blamed for his circumstances, there were still his brothers, Potiphar’s wife and the butler. He had every reason in the world to hate them.

The greatest battle you’ll ever face is the battle against bitterness. The presence of bitterness means the absence of forgiveness. Why is forgiveness such an issue? Because it stands at the heart of the Gospel. The cross is all about forgiveness.  Salvation is all about forgiveness. The Christian life is all about forgiveness. Forgiveness is the cornerstone of everything we have in Christ. If we refuse to walk in the mercy that Jesus has showered on us, we will find ourselves back in prison. That’s what the story of the two debtors in Matthew 18 is all about.

The bitterness of unforgiveness is a deadly virus which captures our thoughts and infects our attitudes. It so warps our bow of intercession that we even find ourselves praying that negative things will happen to others. It magnifies the faults of others and minimizes our own weaknesses. Worst of all, it separates us from the God who is the source of all forgiveness. It makes us toxic to the body of Christ, which is why Scripture warns us to let no “root of bitterness” spring up in our midst. Bitter people pollute the church. Whatever anyone has done to you, the harm you do to yourself through the bitterness of unforgiveness will damage you more than what they did, no matter how awful it was.

But Joseph did not fall into this trap. How do we know? Bitter people have no interest in serving others, or in the fact that there is a bigger reality out there than the world of their own suffering. But Joseph, even in his dungeon, so impressed the prison warden with his serving spirit that he put him in charge of the prison. Bitter people could not care less about the needs of others, but when his two fellow prisoners had a need, Joseph was immediately sensitive to it: “Why are your faces so sad?” he said to them. Bitter people do not have a healthy relationship with the God they blame for their troubles, but Joseph immediately reached out to God to find an answer for his friends. In the midst of hardship most of us cannot imagine, Joseph fought and won a battle which saved him from spiritual, and probably physical death, and made him a source of life to others. His attitude enabled God to turn suffering into blessing.

Some people wind up in a spiritual prison of their own making. Joseph turned his literal prison into a place of freedom. Joseph’s biggest battle was not won the day he was brought from jail to the highest office in the land. His battle was won in the depths of that dungeon when he chose the way of forgiveness and found peace.

You too, by God’s grace, can win that battle. It’s a battle worth fighting -- your life depends on it.

How much power do you want?

Elaine and I have just spent a weekend in Niagara Falls with our friends at Niagara Community Church. Niagara Falls is an awesome sight, but it is more than that. Back 100 years ago, an engineer named Sir Adam Beck had the bright idea of installing underwater turbines to harness the incredible energy generated by the falls. When construction was finished, Niagara supplied most of the power in southern Ontario. To this day, electricity is called “hydro” in this part of Canada.

That’s a lot of power. But there is a greater power yet. According to Paul, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is now at work in us (Ephesians 1:19-20). The power generated by Niagara lit a million households, but it could not raise anyone from the dead.

That power was not only for a single event two thousand years ago, albeit an event all of history hung on. That power is available to us today. In fact, it is working within us.

The sad truth is that, although the Bible itself tells us that, we still don’t believe it. Well, maybe we do as a point of theological truth, but not as an experiential reality.

Dr Francis Schaeffer taught many years ago that there is no dividing line between the natural and the supernatural realms, as if God lived in one compartment and we live in another, and never the two shall meet. God is all in all. He controls everything. As Christians, we are meant to live within the same realm as Jesus did. The same power at work in him is today at work in us.

How much power do you want?

My friend John Babu from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, national security advisor to the Prime Minister of India, was converted through a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, in which he first heard Jesus speaking to him, and then experienced a miracle of healing. His doctors had given him 4 months to live, after 40 years of abusing his body with alcohol. That day the power of God invaded his body. He was instantly healed and stopped drinking. The power of God invaded his mind and will also. He never beat his wife or children again.

In his life and ministry, John saw 6 people raised from the dead. I wrote about one of these miracles last December (see the two posts titled India Calls).

How much power do you want?

Why should God give me such power? Can I be trusted with it? The short answer is he will give you the power you need to do his will. John needed that power to confront the demonic opposition he faced.  It may well be different for us. Yet beware of this trap: do not let your western rationalism persuade you contrary to the Word of God that his supernatural power is not available to you today, or that it has somehow ceased operating, as if God had retired to the south of France or to Florida to play shuffleboard instead of ruling the universe.

The church in the West is weak, and for many reasons. We don’t pray enough, our lives are too busy with other things, we have way too much stuff. All this gets in God’s way.

But the church in the West is weakened far more by this one thing: we have no power. In the face of an enemy who has no hesitation using supernatural power against us, we are power-less for one reason only. We refuse to take God at his Word.

We say we believe the Bible, but we don’t mean it. Jesus had a word for that.

I know I’m simplifying complex issues - that’s what happens when you only have a few hundred words at your disposal.

But please don’t tell me God did miracles then but not now, as if even the conversion of one lost soul could be achieved without the exercise of supernatural power.

How much power do you want?

Let me gently push you into an encounter where you allow God to adjust your heart and increase your faith.

The world needs that power today.

It can only be exercised through you.