Recovering Biblical Spirituality, Part 5

Chapter Two (continued)

The paralyzed man was waiting on a Move of God, but he got a visitation from Jesus! There is a difference between a revival or move of God and a visitation. These terms are synonymous one with the other in some circles, but there is indeed a vast difference between the two. When Moses and the children of Israel were in the wilderness, the Lord spoke to Moses and offered him a move of His Spirit but withheld from him His personal visitation. The Lord was going to make good on His promise, but He was withholding His person from the nation because of sin in the camp. Moses wisely discerned the purpose of God and declined the Move of God in favor of a visitation. “If thy presence go not with me,” he said, “carry us not up!” 

The man at the pool of Bethesda awaited the move of God with all those around him. He was looking at the pool, waiting for the move, when God suddenly arrives and offers the man Himself. What would he choose? The Move of God or the Person of God?  Not just the paralyzed man, but the whole crowd at the pool typify Christianity today. Blind to spiritual truths, deaf to the cries of the lost, paralyzed in the face of the enemy, crippled by sin, carnality, and unbelief. All the while, this company, in spite of their infirmity exhibited tenacious commitment to being in the one place they KNOW where deliverance is a remote possibility.

Thousands have come out of dead religion to churches that believe the “full gospel” or the “evangelical message,” but the greater multitude has failed to receive the full benefit. These comfort themselves with the testimony and history of those who entered in before them. They know there are those who have been delivered when God moved in the water, and they are waiting on the revival, the move of God.  When Jesus approaches this man, He watches him where he lay there a while, then asks a question. “Do you want to get better?” There comes a time when enough is enough. Now is that time in the church. Now is an hour when the most critical factors in spiritual renewal will not involve sitting under the right man at the right time at the right place. Jesus Himself is in the House. He has come to be glorified in His saints. 

Here’s the million-dollar question. Do you want to get well? After many years infirmity can become a part of the persona – an old friend and acquaintance. It’s easy preaching to proclaim that “one of these days” we will see the outpouring, “we will understand it better by and by,” we’ll soon be “raptured out of this pain and woe…” 

There is an upside to being unempowered. You can look to the pastor as your “paid Christian.” He prays for you, preaches for you, takes your tithe, affirming to you that its all that can be expected of “one in your condition.” You surely can’t go, but you can send your money, and its the same thing.  After ALL, you are blind, lame, paralyzed. The pastor can’t expect you in church on Sunday night, let alone require you to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him as he follows Christ to bring an empowered testimony to a lost and dying world! Into this malaise, Jesus suddenly steps up in your face and asks, “Will you be made whole?” Notice the impotent man’s response: “I have no man!”

This echoes sentiments today. “Where are the Finneys? Where are the Billy Sundays? Can there be another Branham, Parham, John Lake or Smith Wigglesworth?” This is the cry. Or perhaps can you make a journey across the states to one of the living legends, widely popular in the body of Christ today?  Before Jesus came to this pool, the paralyzed man was helpless. His only hope was a flawed situation that only ministered occasionally to one among hundreds. This man was waiting thirty-eight years on a move, and suddenly he gets a visitation. Watch this same man listening perhaps in distraction to Jesus, one eye watching for the slightest ripple in the water, the other looking past Jesus for a suitable man perhaps to put him in the water. Jesus obviously didn’t measure up to what he thought was necessary to get him delivered. The Son of God Himself is standing before him, and he is still looking for a man to put him in the water. How true of Christians today.

The Son of God Himself resides in all His glory within them and yet they see only weakness within, and are continually looking outward for some man, some doctrine, or church group to help them into the move of God.  Moses carefully warned the Israelites in Deuteronomy against idolatry. He even went so far as to warn them against idolatry regarding the glory of God on the mountain where the law was given. Here you see the clear danger of worshipping the manifestation of God or the instrument of God rather than God Himself. The children of Israel watched Moses ascend a mountain burning with visible Holy Fire. When Moses, the delegated leader was long in coming out, they became disillusioned. Gazing like forlorn sheep into the fire of God they deceived themselves into committing idolatry. They made a golden calf, stripped naked and worshipped it. Where did they get the idea for a golden calf? 

The indication of this story is clear. Was it just any old fire that could cause the Israelites to commit idolatry? What they seem to have claimed was that the idea for the idol came from staring into the fire of God. Thereby the claim that the calf “leapt out of the fire…” 

This is how it is today. The people of God experience His glory. But rather than worship the God of glory, they look for a doctrine, a church or a great man to “leap out of the fire…” and they give away to man, or man’s institution the glory that should have been God’s alone. Therefore in the revivals of the past, you see William Branham, a great man of God leapt out of the fire of God, and the people made an idol out of him, giving him deference and honor that belonged only to God. As a result, he fell into error and died before his time.

The same is true of A.A. Allen, the great healing evangelist who died of liver disease brought on by alcoholism, crushed under the weight of the glory men gave to him rather than to God. Likewise, the evangelist Jack Coe, who claimed to have the biggest gospel tent in the world, under pressure to compete for the honor of the crowds, claimed he could not get sick, and soon died of Bulbar Polio. In recent times, you can point to Oral Robert’s pressure to produce funds for the City of Faith, or Jimmy Swaggart, who believed that only he could bring the great commission to its fulfillment and staggered under the intense pressure of being the man that the people expected, because they gave glory to him rather than to God.

You know you have lapsed into idolatry when you look with more expectation to God working through a man, or church or doctrinal system in a greater way than He proposes to work in your own heart. All true ministry will leave you more dependent on Jesus residing in your own human heart than in Jesus in them or their church or doctrine. The hope of Glory, the hope for deliverance and miracles rests deep within your own heart in the place where Jesus was enthroned when you accepted Him as personal Saviour.  The men of God and the moves of God come and go, but Jesus is standing before His church, the same yesterday, today and forever, the eternal, living Word. We must shake ourselves from the mesmerism of the rippling water in the pool, the endless waiting for the next move. At best only one in a thousand can hope for transformation.

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