God wants a broken vessel. Not broken as by sin or tragedy but broken as in yielded. A heart whereby God can easily impart, where the things of God can easily flow in and flow out. I am always a little amazed to be around people who have all the facts right but never experience what they know. Usually, they do not live a yielded life. They do not know the secret of yielding. They do not know that it is in the yielding that we become effective servants. The Bible says that to whom we yield ourselves, we become servants (Ro. 6). Such a person may be seen taking a stance that says "make me". Or, "if God wants me to have ____, He will make me". (You can insert almost anything in the blank). "Make me speak in tongues...make me laugh and rejoice...make me praise". Pentecostals years ago were, under the guise of wanting to avoid the "flesh", totally missed the mark with this unyielded idea, "I will if the Spirit moves me". Nothing has done more damage. We are to yield to what God has already moved and commanded. We are to "do" the word, not just "hear" it.
Many of those I know will, perhaps, never move into the experiential river of God simply because they won't yield. (Maybe they can't yield). They are as the Pharisees were. They had all the facts right, standing on true promises, but when the reality of the promises appeared, they turned away. They could not yield. In the same way, many today, on paper, in doctrine, believe in the Holy Ghost. They say they believe in His demonstrations. Then, He shows up and they either run away, resist or reject the reality of the very thing they say they believe. This is what Jesus was dealing with when He said to the the Pharisees, "you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free". The word truth is "verity", reality. It doesn't "set" you free as is so often quoted. It "makes" you free. It makes you free from living in the promise of something, no matter how true, without the reality of the something.
Many an unyielded believer will say "I believe in the joy of the Lord. Yessiree!" Most likely, that believer will claim to have the joy. And then.....the real Jesus joy manifests. Sometimes it is like watching a flock of frightened birds scatter before you. They believed in joy until it showed up. When the Holy Ghost manifests anything, maybe just His presence, it is confrontational. People love to say "I love the presence of God". And then, just as the Bible promises, His presence manifests with its promise of fulness of joy (Ps. 16:11), and people will run away. They loved His presence until the reality of it manifested. God in the house can be powerful, breathtaking, confrontational. It can sap the strength from your knees and the logic from your mind.
Jesus told the Pharisees they were in bondage. They denied it, forgetting their history of bondage and the bondage of the Romans they were under at that moment. Not only that, but they had even more bondage. Their worst bondage was to facts and truths held sacred. When the reality of their promise, Jesus the Messiah, showed up, they rejected HIm. Today, people claim a love of God loudly, until reality comes And then....confronted with reality, they have to decide if they really do love Him or was their love just a matter of words.
The gospel was never meant to be preached with mere words. It was meant to be preached with the demonstrations of the Holy Ghost and the power of God, confronting every man with his bondage. Today, like the Pharisees, people are educated, armed with true facts and in bondage to those facts. Blinded by truths that are not experientially real. Religion fills us with knowledge but forbids the experience. We are ever learning in religion, but never coming to know the power of God. Oh my friend, the Holy Ghost wants to give life to the promises. The letter kills but the Spirit gives life to it. He wants to set you free from mere head knowledge and give the experience of that same knowledge. Oh, how wonderful when He gives life to the Word. And this, my friend, is going to go on until the day of departure and then the reality of it all dawns upon us.
The gospel was never meant to be preached with mere words. It was meant to be preached with the demonstrations of the Holy Ghost and the power of God, confronting every man with his bondage. Today, like the Pharisees, people are educated, armed with true facts and in bondage to those facts. Blinded by truths that are not experientially real. Religion fills us with knowledge but forbids the experience. We are ever learning in religion, but never coming to know the power of God. Oh my friend, the Holy Ghost wants to give life to the promises. The letter kills but the Spirit gives life to it. He wants to set you free from mere head knowledge and give the experience of that same knowledge. Oh, how wonderful when He gives life to the Word. And this, my friend, is going to go on until the day of departure and then the reality of it all dawns upon us.
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