Victory is inner, seeing invisible reality

In C.R. Stam's The Controversy his overall observation is, “It is not mental acumen that brings men to an understanding of the mystery, but a sincere desire for the truth. How many of God’s humblest saints rejoice in ‘the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles,’ while the intellectual wonder what it is all about! Surely it is true that: ‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.’ "

Stam succinctly sums up, “So deep is the antipathy of some religious leaders toward the Pauline message and those who proclaim it that they will simply lie low each time their falsehoods are exposed and await an opportunity to strike again. This is Satan’s strategy, for it is easier to believe a lie one has heard a thousand times than to believe a truth he has never heard before . . .”

*****

“Folks, the path of faith is wearying to the flesh,” says Jordan, reminding that he has for the past four-plus decades spent time on Saturday evenings to sit and read the Pastoral Epistles--I Timothy through Philemon—in preparation for his Sunday ministry. “Your flesh doesn’t like to be left out and that’s what faith does. You have to be constantly on guard because the seduction is so subtle and so insidious that it gets all of us.

“That’s why Paul warns in II Timothy 4:16, ‘Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.’

“Not just the doctrine but yourself. Why? You’re being careful to bring these things into your life because you can get to assuming they’re there when they’re not and you get kind of diverted into other things. It can happen to you, too!

*****

“That’s why Paul says in I Corinthians 9:27, ‘But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.’

“In other words, he disciplines himself. He’s careful to maintain good works. Why? Because that’s going to make him more pleasing to God? No. It’s because it makes him a better soldier. It makes sure he’s not ‘entangled with the things of this world.’ It makes sure he’s doing what’s expedient and not being brought under the power of something deceptively.

“It’s a faithful saying that you can give yourself to that; these things are good and profitable unto men.

“By the way, when Paul says ‘suffer,’ that word doesn’t necessarily mean that you experience pain. The word simply means 'to allow.' Jesus said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ You only get to chapter II Timothy 3:12 before Paul says, ‘Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’

“Now, in II Timothy 2:9 he’s talking about himself suffering persecution, so you know that’s what the context is. If I allow the life of Christ, and that godly edification now to live in me, then there is a reigning that I’ll be a part of; there’s a promise of the life to come in that future out there that I’ll be a part of. To the measure that I don’t allow Christ to do it then I lose out. So the issue there is the Judgment Seat of Christ and the life that is to come.”

*****

Spiritual growth is a process of paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to your own, Jordan explains.

“Preachers spend time trying to get people to do more and more--to try harder, live radically for God, change your life, etc.—and the result is really stunted spiritual growth because you fix your eyes on yourself and you can’t do it,” he said. “It’s not going to be you. And when you’re in those moments where it’s you, and you come to the conclusion, ‘I can’t do it,’ that’s good! Because you know where to go to the One who can.

“Most of the thinking about Christian living and sanctification is really just terribly narcissistic. It’s thinking about, ‘How are we doing? How are we growing? Am I doing it right? Am I not doing it right?’

“We ponder our spiritual failures and we brood over our spiritual successes and it’s all about us. The more you focus on your need to be better, the worse you really get. You wind up becoming neurotic and self-absorbed and all of life’s about you.

“When you’re possessed with your performance, instead of Christ’s performance; when you spend your time thinking about what you’re doing, instead of what He’s doing, well, then, what are you going to do but get worse? That hinders your spiritual growth because it makes you increasingly self-centered.

“Sanctification, set-apart living, is forgetting about yourself. ‘It’s not me! It’s Christ!’ The grace of God works--is manifested, put on display--in your minuses, not your pluses. It’s in your weaknesses, not your strengths. Now, that’s the opposite of religion. Religion says, ‘YOU got to make it, YOU got to create it , or you’re going to fail.’

“My wife has a new chrysanthemum plant on the kitchen counter that just had a little leaf come out. Now, if she’d of pulled that thing up out of the pot and looked at its roots, and stuck it back down, you know what would happen to it? It wouldn’t grow so good.

“If you’re always uprooting, digging the thing up, checking on its growth (‘How am I doing?’), it ain’t never going to get anywhere. It’s Christ who’s the issue. He’s the cornerstone; the point of reference all of our life and all of our growth originates from. Spiritual growth and deliverance is by God’s design and God’s timing.

*****

“Back in I Kings 6, when Solomon’s building the temple, all of the stones that were put into that temple were fitted, prepared, structured off-site at the quarry and then brought and put in, and not a hammer—no noise as the temple was put together. It just kind of grew silently.

“The work to shape and to form us was designed and finished before we were ever set into place into the building. ‘For we are his workmanship.’ You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. He already invented it.

“God’s made you a part of something that before the foundation of the world He planned to do. He’s already formed it and fitted you into it. It’s His design and you grow in that. If you’re going to bring that design into the reality of your experience, you appropriate it by FAITH. The reality is that’s the reality!

“He came to live His life fully in you and Paul says, ‘Wake up, dudes, don’t you know that?!’  You’re bought with a price. You ought to live in the reality of who God has made you. If God came to dwell in you, how should you live?! Wake up! If you’ve got an asset like THAT, what should you do?! USE IT!

“God’s in you to live His life. Now, in I Corinthians 6, that’s talking about you as an individual. His purpose in you personally is to make your life a vehicle, a vessel; that is, a living manifestation of the One who inhabits you.

“You remember Paul in Philippians 1 says that his desire is that whether by life or by death that Christ would be magnified in his body? That when people would see him, even in the extremity of death, they would see that the one he treasured, the one he valued, the one that was of the greatest magnitude to him was Jesus Christ, and when he made choices, he made them based upon what God’s Word said. When he took actions, it was based upon what God wanted done.

“The way sin doesn’t run your life is you’re not under the law; you’re not focusing on your performance. You’re under grace, looking at who God has made you in His Son.

*****

“I have a friend who doesn’t like how a song says, ‘He set me free.’ He said you need to sing it, ‘He made me free.’ That’s a technicality but he’s right. God doesn’t just set you free; He MADE you something you weren’t before. You’re free. You’re the Lord’s ‘free man.’ That’s the reality and faith can believe that.

“But you know what happens? If you look at Romans 7:1, Paul says, ‘Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?’ As long as it’s going to be what you do, here’s what’s going to happen to you.

“Then he writes in verse 14, ‘For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.’ I don’t like to argue with Paul, but that verse is wrong. Oh, I know Paul’s saying it, but Paul is not sold under sin. He just spent 23 verses in chapter 6, and six verses in chapter 7, telling you he’s free. And then he started looking at himself and his performance and said, ‘You know, I don’t look free.’

“The more he focused on himself, you know what the more happened? Those accusatory thoughts came in and sin revived and you know what happens when you start looking at yourself? You begin to see yourself, and when you begin to see yourself, you know who you begin to see? Failure.

“You say, ‘Well, I don’t have any failure.’ Well, that’s called pride. The Bible says the man that says he has no sin has made God a liar and truth’s not in him.

*****

“You go back to the psalmist in Psalm 3 and he could have been talking about Job of old. He says, ‘People look at me and they see what’s going on in my life, and they say, There’s no help from God for him; he’s so far gone even God can’t help him!’

“Paul says, ‘You know, those voices of condemnation and accusing are going to come because you’re conscious of who you are in you, and when you focus on who you are in you, you know what happens? ‘O wretched man that I am.’

“You see it’s an inner struggle. There’s a spiritual battle that goes on but of faith. The victory is an inner victory, seeing the invisible reality. Moses won the victory, Hebrews 11 says, over Pharaoh by ‘seeing Him who is invisible.’ By faith, looking at the truth of God.

“Paul says, ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’

“When you have your ‘I’ moments, they’re really not ‘I’ moments. They’re moments when you need to be learning that, ‘I can’t do this.’ And when you see, ‘I can’t do it,’ that’s what Galatians 2 told you.

“You only learn two things in your whole Christian life: ‘It’s not I, it’s Christ.’ And when you get into the, ‘The deliverance isn’t here; I can’t do it,’ you say, ‘Whoa, I need to look at Christ! Because HE can; because HE did!' "