Copyright
© 2018 Michael A. Brown
‘…dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’ (Rom. 6:11)
The life transformation of being born
again, with the coming of the Holy Spirit to indwell and fill our hearts, makes
us alive to God. Whereas before we were
ignorant of and blind to the things of God, the things of God are now made real
to us. It is the Spirit of God within us
whose love for God births in us a desire to be with God, to seek his face in
prayer, to read his word and to be with our new church family of
believers. Spending quality time in
intimacy with God builds up this love within us and fills us with warmth and
passion for him. And as with any
relationship, it is regularly feeding such intimacy that deepens and sustains
our growing love for God. Being alive to
God gives us a depth of inward joy and satisfaction of heart that the things of
the world can never give us. We love
Jesus more than we love anything or anyone else. Knowing and walking with him becomes the true
meaning of life; he is all in all to us:
‘My lover is radiant and ruddy,
outstanding among ten thousand.’
(Song 5:10)
It is this inward warmth of love for God
that causes that tell-tale shining in our eyes; that warm, joyful smile on our
face; that glow, peace and inner radiance of his presence with us; that desire
in our heart to be with him, and to be inwardly clean and right with him; that
causes tongues and songs of praise to well up and flow freely from our lips;
that creates passion in our heart for the things of God, and causes love,
helpfulness and compassion for others to naturally overflow from us towards
them. The love and fire of passion
for Christ inwardly compels us to follow and obey him:
‘If anyone loves me, he will obey
my teaching.’
(John 14:23)
‘For Christ’s love compels us…’ (1 Cor. 5:14)
Love and passion for Jesus crowns him Lord
of all. It finds the ultimate meaning of
life only in him, and it empties the carnal and sense-based life of this world
of the meaning it once had for us. The
warmth of inward love and desire for God pushes out the desire for other
things. Those things that used to
attract us and that once had so much meaning for us, no longer have the same
grip on us. We abandon those things and
the desire for sin drops off. They
become dead to us because a deeper love has taken hold of us which draws us
into the things of God, and we now find our deepest pleasure, satisfaction and fulfilment in these things. This heart love for God draws us into the
secret place of prayer, into worship and into soaking ourselves in his
presence. The word of God becomes alive,
powerful, meaningful and precious to us when we are in love with the things of
God. [1]
Being alive with love, passion and desire
for the things of God in this way is something that the spirit of the world
cannot stand or endure in believers. The spirit of the world is antithetical to love for the things of God.
It finds these uncomfortable and is hostile towards them, even sometimes
hating believers for this. It very much
wants to maintain the status quo of
people’s spiritual blindness and their carnal security in the ways of the
world, lest they come to Christ and get saved.
This is why the early believers were persecuted so much. It invariably tries to push the light and
love of God away, to remove these from the public square, and to disassociate
itself from any relationship with believers who have determined that they will live
wholeheartedly for God.
Passion for God brings us into separation
from the spirit of the world. When we
become dead to the world, the world no longer wants us. Many of those people with whom we once spent
our free time and whose company we enjoyed, no longer want us around. Unless they themselves are seeking God in
their hearts and begin to get attracted to the message of the gospel, they do
not want Jesus or the things of God, so to them we become dead:
‘If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated
me first. If you belonged to the world,
it would love you as its own. As it is,
you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.’ (John 15:18-19)
'The
reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.' (1 John 3:1)
'[To
them] we are the smell of death...'
( 2 Cor. 2:16)
‘May I never boast except in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to
me, and I to the world.’
(Gal. 6:14)
The world loves its own and will always
seek to get us to compromise, water down or change what we believe, know and
experience about God, in the hope that it can make us like itself again and so
remove the uncomfortableness of the overt presence and message of Jesus. It will be friendly towards us just so long
as we are willing to compromise or water down what we believe, or maintain a
convenient silence over what we believe and stand for. Otherwise, it separates itself from us.
Just as the Holy Spirit within us wants to
pull us in the direction of the things of God, away from sin and carnality and
into purity, holiness and the blessing of God, the world will always try to
pull us back in the direction of sin and carnality, and away from God. However, it is in determining to maintain a
close and intimate walk with God, being consistently and regularly refreshed in
his presence, and stoking the fire of our inner love and passion for God, that
helps us to not become dominated or overcome by the carnal desires and
attractions of the world. Keeping
ourselves in the love of God in this way helps us to continue to overflow with
his presence and blessing, and thereby to continue to influence the lives of
unbelievers around us who do not yet know the Lord:
'Do
not love the world or anything in the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world – the cravings of
sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does –
comes not from the Father but from the world.
The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of
God lives forever.'
(1 John 2:15-17)
‘Keep yourselves in God’s
love...’ (Jude
v.21)
[1] Furthermore, it is being alive to the healing
power of God that moves us on from mere debates and doubts about healing and
makes us into passionate preachers of God’s desire to heal. Being alive and passionate towards the
healing power of God, and knowing that he wants people to be whole, frees us up
within and impels us into wanting to pray for them to be healed. It is such conviction, and the free
communication to people of God’s desire to heal, which then awakens hope and faith in their hearts, helping them to overcome their doubts and to seek God for healing. And it is such openness that then links their heart with God’s heart and frees him to actually
heal them.
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