Purpose driven or Spirit led?

    

     A few years ago there was a  popular book out called "Purpose Driven Life".  I didn't  much care for the book but, my opinion aside, the book did raise some questions which that I have thought some about some.   Are we driven by a purpose or led by the Spirit?  Are the two the same?  I suppose the two can be the same, but most often, flesh being what it is, they are not.   

    Here is what I have found to be a problem with the purpose driven idea:   where people buy into the idea, they spend much time seeking their purpose.  Sometimes they even abandoning what they are already doing because they find a perceived purpose they like better.  Or, they find a purpose (they may refer to it as their "calling"), and that is it.  End of search.  They build a box and define themselves by their perceived purpose.  Their perceived purpose then becomes their lord and master, determiner of destiny.  Their happiness begins to become dependent upon whether or not they fulfilled their perceived purpose.  Their usefulness to God exists only within their purpose boundaries. And, leaders are often found more guilty of this than anyone.  A leader, having accepted the calling  (perceived purpose) to be, for example, a "Pastor", before long cannot see himself as doing anything else but pastor.  Before long, he is no longer a faithful servant who will do anything for the Master.  He is now in his pastor-box and limited to only that.  Instead of his world getting bigger, it gets smaller.  Instead of being an effective Spirit-led servant, who will do anything for God, he can only be led to do things that seem to him to fit in his perceived purpose.  I have know those who can preach up a storm but do nothing else worth mentioning. Lousy Christians, lousy husbands, lousy worshipper, but a great preacher. That, my friend is failure.  What if, in that context, God says to that pastor "Stop what you are doing.  I want you to go to the mission field".  Purpose driven, that pastor will probably say "get thee behind me Satan".  He is in his purpose driven box. Perhaps the worst thing about all this is that your joy begins to come from your works, and not from your God.  That is a slicky slope.

     I have found that if you start a new believer off looking for that advertised "God has a plan for your life"  notion and you may have ruined him. He spends the rest of his days looking.  He may come up with a preconceived notion of what it is and be off the mark by a country mile being too young to properly discern the voice of the Lord. Sheep follow the Master.  Lambs follow the sheep.  Mess with that principle and you have a mess to live with.   Or, that new believer may actually have a good idea, maybe a word from the Lord about a future development and prematurely he grabs hold of it, allows it to become the driver of his life and often causes more harm than good for most of his life.  Or, on the other hand if he cannot seem to find a purpose, as described by his religious surroundings, he sinks into inner despair, feeling of no real value, and all because he has no perceived purpose.  That is not the way of the Lord. That is why, as the Bible encourages, we don't put "novices" into leadership.  Personally I have had to attempt to rescue more than one young person who received a so-called word from the Lord on about the first week of their salvation, calling them to preach.  All of their efforts went immediately toward that goal and it was the end of their growth and the beginning of their despair. That perceived "call", perceived purpose, had become a burdening law that kept them from ever learning to walk in the Spirit and be a good Christian.  For new Christians I would encourage them on working on being a great Christian, a great worshipper, a good  faithful person, a Bible student and an obedient servant and purpose will unfold in God's time.  Just be God's.  He had you , birthed you, for that purpose.

         Really, Christianity is not life lived by a driving purpose.  It is life lived, led by the Holy Ghost.  There is a huge difference between being led and being driven.   I have known people so driven by their perceived purpose, their "calling", that they become unfit to fellowship with by God or man.  Their calling became their ambition.  For example, some are so driven to win souls, their perceived purpose, they have no time for worship.  Worship is a frivolous waste of time to them.  Others, and I ran into one of these recently, are so driven to obtain prosperity (their perceived purpose), they have no time or tolerance for just enjoying a time in the presence of God.  I have known preachers to burn themselves out fulfilling their perceived purpose.   Their ministry became their god and they sacrificed everything for that god.  Others, like Martha of the Bible, are so driven to serve, they have no time for the better part, to sit and enjoy the presence of God.  True Christianity is supposed to be a life lived walking in fellowship, companionship, and joint endeavors with the Holy Ghost. Not driven - but led.   

    There is a purpose we all share. That purpose is to please God.  The Bible says that God is worthy to receive glory, honor and power because for His pleasure all things were created (Rev. 4:11). The value of what we do does not come from the act itself.  The value comes from pleasing God.   Our value doesn't come from the perceived purpose we have come up with, but from having pleased God.  I don't preach because I am purpose-driven to preach. I am purposed to please God.  If it pleases God for me preach, I will preach.  It is not the preaching that drives me, but the pleasure of my Father.  It is not the work that I have done that gives me pleasure but the voice of God saying "Well done, good and faithful servant". Our goal should be to simply be like Jesus and be able to say as He did,  "I always do those things that please the father", Jo. 8:29.  If we walk in the Spirit, He is going to lead us, as He did Jesus, to please the Father.  We just have to remember, it is not the thing we are doing that matters most, it the pleasure of the Father that matters most.

   When the Father's pleasure becomes your standard, your benchmark, you start to live on a different level.  Now, for example, on this level, you don't just worship.  You worship in spirit and in truth, for that is what God is seeking and that is how He wants us to worship.  You don't just praise because you like to do that but because with such sacrifices "God is well pleased", Heb. 13:15-16.  You even turn from sin, not so much because of threat of hell, but because you want to please God.  You make life-style choices, not on the basis of fear or popular trends, but because you sense the pleasure, or lack of pleasure, coming from God.  For example, you may turn away from some form of music, or certain movies, not because they are going to destroy and send you to hell, but because down inside you sense that for you, it does not please the Father.  Others might do those things, but the pleasure of the Father says to you "No..not for you".

    

Freedom! Freedom! Glorious Liberty!

    You know, freedom is a wonderful, glorious thing.  The Bible refers to a believer's freedom as "glorious liberty of the children of God", and that it is!  Just thinking of all the things we are free from ought to be enough to turn everyone into a shouting, dancing, radical Pentecostal.  Free from the law of sin and death, the curse of the law, the power of sin, death, hell, the wrath of God, rejection, the devil and demons.  You could write a library listing what we  are, (or could be),  free from when we come to the Lord and then you could write another one about all the freedom we have to do, and to be.   What a list that would make!     The Apostle Paul enjoyed a remarkable level of freedom. He once said all things were lawful to him, but not expedient.  That statement alone speaks of freedom beyond the power of words to explain.  He was not only free from his past, He also had the freedom to know God, to be filled with the Spirit, to talk and sing to God in tongues, to experience the glory of God, to hear the voice of the Spirit, to be used mightily of the Spirit in so many ways, including writing most of what we call the New Testament.    And,that same freedom is ours as well.

    For a believer there are two things I am mindful of concerning freedom.  One, is to avoid religion. That is that form of Christianity void of the life, power and presence of the Holy Ghost. Religion and religious people will steal your liberty.  The Bible speaks of religious men, perhaps unknowingly, but used of the devil, who will  come upon us, steal our liberty and bring us back into bondage, (Gal. 2:4).  The Galatians were warned of this and encouraged to stand fast in their liberty and not be brought back into bondage, (Gal. 5:1).     The second thing to be mindful of, in order to enjoy ever increasing liberty,  is to be totally committed to the Holy Ghost.  Where He rules, where He is Lord, where He is fully embraced, there is "liberty".  Where He does not rule, there is bondage.  This Holy Ghost liberty is  not only liberty from things but liberty to see and experience the glory of God and even be changed by that glory (2nd Cor. 3:13-18).  The true presence of the Holy Spirit often comes with such an amazing sense of liberty.  Once you know it, you recognize it.  You know it when it is present and you know it is not present. When it is present, everything takes on such a fluidity.  The River flows!  The anointing flows and the ease with which people present receive from God, or sense God, or have a worship experience with God is remarkable.  Miracles happen so much easier where there is the liberty.

  In my opinion, church leaders often don't put the premium on liberty that they should.  Often churches and their services are structured so as to not allow freedom. Oh, they might talk about freedom from something but after that, they put up a fence preventing future freedom.  The corral the sheep, I guess.  They often ignore the Spirit of Liberty when it comes into their church and shut it down, turn it off, always controlling.  Liberty tends to frighten people who are used to be totally in control. Sometimes leaders, and believers as well, reject freedom because they have never known freedom and it scares them.  Liberty  breaking out in a service will  sometimes scare a congregation used to their pastor and deacons being in total control.  Oh,  if they only they knew, where the Spirit is allowed to be Lord,  freedom reigns.  There is liberty.  And where there is liberty, glory comes.  And, where glory comes, people are touched and changed and God is pleased.

Singing in Tongues

     In the early days of the charismatic move, while I was still casually observing and doubting the move, my TV was on in another room from where I was sitting.  All at once, I remember so clearly, I heard this sound such as I had never heard and I quickly moved to see the screen.  Peter Jennings (ABC) was covering some big charismatic rally, interviewing some leader and in the background the crowd was singing in tongues. My heart started beating fast and like a man arrested, I was hooked. It was the most incredible sound of sounds. Personally, I believe it was what started Pentecost so long ago. There came a "sound", (the word is echo) from heaven.  It had to be this sound.  That day, watching ABC, I became a charismatic. I heard a sound from heaven.

      In reading about the Azuza outpouring from which so many Pentecostals trace their roots, singing in tongues was the dominant expression of worship there.  It was their beginning. In fact, that outpouring  actually began in Kansas with some young people who were seeking the Holy Ghost.  I read where they were sitting in a circle praying when the Holy Ghost fell on them and they began to sing in tongues.  At Azuza Street, before preaching, before anything, they sang in the Holy Ghost.  Eye witnesses said as long as they did, the glory of God would remain upon them.  The power of God seemed to rise and fall with the music of their singing in tongues. Thinking of that, I find it odd that for so many Pentecostals today, singing in tongues is a foreign idea.  That is sad, indeed.

     Why don't we do this more today? A lot of reasons, I suppose.  One reason is that we don't assign any value to the matter.  Far too many leaders assign high value only to that which is connected to their preaching. (That is called "self-inflation")    Secondly, we too often leave such things up to musician-type people and they are to busy trying to do the best at what they do, make music and lead people into that activity. I understand that.  I once was such a musician that I thought the anointing of God depended on how well I performed a song. (Thank God for forgiveness!).  Thirdly, to get to the kind of worship where singing in tongues can happen easily, you have to not be in a hurry.  In so much of today's church, everything is rat-a-tat-tat, get in get out, maintain the schedule and for God's sake don't take up the preaching time.  I attended a Pentecostal church for a while, some time back, and the Spirit would move on us and we would almost get to the place of worship and alas, the worship team used up their alloted time and that was the end of that.  Up came the Pastor and the spiritual air of intimacy left the building like a busted balloon.  Worship will seldom, if ever, happen in such a place.  People may want it, but the schedule will rule and reign.

    Can't sing in tongues?  Yes, you can.  Paul said "Iwill sing with the spirit and I will sing with the understanding".  Assuming you are baptized with the Holy Ghost and freely speak to God in your heavenly language of the spirit, it is within your decision making ability to decide to do it.   Praise / talk to God in your heavenly languagek, and, then...every now and then...don't speak to God. Sing to Him.  Lift your hands, close your eyes and sing what you would have sung in your native language in your heavenly language.  God likes it.

The Music God Loves

   Do you think God likes music?  Heaven will be filled with music. Even Jesus will sing to us there. Fifty times in the Bible we are commanded to "sing unto the Lord" . Part of the evidence of being filled with the Holy Ghost is that music flows. The evidence that the Word of God is dwelling in us richly is that music flows.   We are to come before His presence with singing (Ps. 100:2). So, I think God likes music.

So, if God likes music, what kind of music do you suppose He likes?  That, by the way,  it seems to me, should be the determining factor in deciding what kind of music we give to Him. Lets see if we can offer some ideas about what kind of music God might like.  And, let me say I am not going to list  good / excellent music since that is so subject to opinion and style.  I'll skip that one, other than to say that whatever we do unto the Lord, music or anything else, we should do heartily and do well.   Here are some other ideas about God's kind of music you might like to think about:

1.  Beautiful.  It is difficult to imagine, considering the glory of the Lord and the beauty of heaven, that music such as might be heard in heaven, would be anything but beautiful.

2.  Joyful. Considering that in the presence of the Lord there is fullness of joy, music that reflects joy must be something God likes.  God demands that we serve Him with gladness so our songs should reflect gladness.  The redeemed come  to God  singing and rejoicing, (Is. 51:11)

3. Love songs.  Songs that say "I love you" to Him.  What parent doesn't want to hear his child say "I love you".  As far as I am concerned, there are not enough of these kind of songs.

4. Thanksgiving & Praise.  If we are to come into His presence with thanksgiving and praise, (and we are) then songs that express those things must be important to God.

5. Psalms & hymns.  We are commanded to admonish and instruct each other in "psalms" (the Word put in song) and "hymns", (testimonies of God's goodness in song). God said do it, so He must enjoy it. 

6. Spiritual songs.  These are songs from within our spirit, sang in the language of our spirit (tongues). These are non-carnal / non-natural songs. These are melodies of the spirit.  This kind of music marked the Azuza street outpouring and as well, the charismatic outpouring beginning in the sixties.  These are the melodies of the heart / spirit we are to sing unto the Lord.  God loves to hear us speak / sing in a language only He understands.   

7. Songs with grace unto the Lord.  These are songs that express our favor directly to Him.  So many of the songs we sing these days do not speak directly to God. They may be about Him but not to Him. And, so many of them reflect His grace toward us, but not our grace toward Him.

8. Prophetical.  This is not the same as singing in tongues, as some suppose. This is not a song predicting the future. This is not someone adlibing a song in a spirit of praise., which some might call prophetical. This is a song or an artist singing a song and the anointing and power on that song, perhaps that voice,  lifts you  straight into a state of worship and a sense of the reality of the Lord.  Revelations says the "testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy".  Every now and then, someone captures this anointing and when they do it jars the spirit to wake up and worship.  This is a prophetical song.

9. Major keys.  Minor keys, as opposed to major keys, in music, are used to express discordant, whining, sorrowful, sad, rejected feelings. Rejected Israel specializes in minor key songs, expressing their much sorrow. Some people think, since Israeli type music is most often in minor keys, it somehow must be spiritual and they identify with it that way. Actually, sick children speak in minor keys. Bill Clinton spoke in a minor key. Most creatures, except man, speaks in minor keys. Man is the only creature that can choose to sing in a major key.  Believers have nothing to whine about. We should celebrate and use music that reflects that celebration. God has asked that we come to Him rejoicing. 

10. Harmonious.  The Bible says if two "agree" touching anything on earth, it will be done.  The word "agree" is the word for symphony, denoting harmonious musical parts coming together.  Different notes same song.  It is why a song, with the good harmony touches the heart so easily. God loves harmony in how we live together, work together and, I believe, sing together.


  Now, what kind of music do you suppose God does not like?  I can think of a few.  Complaining, whining songs.   Songs that are so reflective of the natural man that they have no spiritual connection. Songs that so reflect some wicked element of society, which, though popular, does not reflect an affinity with the Kingdom of God but rather that wicked element.  God has made it clear He does not want us to identify with the world, but rather with the Kingdom of God.  If we mind the things of the world, the carnal man, it becomes an enmity between us and God. I can't imagine God liking songs sang for spiritual reasons, that are not true. And, in my opinion, I can't imagine God being pleased when all our music is about us and none about Him.   The truth is, before his ejection from heaven, Lucifer hovered over the thrown of God. There was said to be music in him, perhaps meaning his job was to make music for God. Knowing this, and knowing approaching God requires music, you can rest assured, there is war over music. That means to me, that we should be paying attention to the matter.  "Sing unto the Lord"