Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries |
The believer who has passion for God as a result of responding to the Potter’s wheel.
Friday, April 8, 2011
The first passage was REV 3:15-16,
the second passage was 1CO 16:22.
The believer who has experienced the genuine brokenness that comes from responding to the potter’s wheel of progress: The believer who wants to get closer and closer to God the Father and His Son.
The believer who has experienced the genuine brokenness that comes from responding to the potter’s wheel of progress: He will manifest a love and passion that protects them from becoming lukewarm.
In REV 3:15-16 we have a warning from our Lord,
“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I would that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.”
PRO 4:23, Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it {flow} the springs of life.
The word lukewarm becomes a very excellent illustration and is analogous to the fact that the person in this world who is most disoriented is that believer in TLJC who is categorized as lukewarm and will be embarrassed and shrink in shame at the JSOC or the bema seat judgment.
The lukewarm believer can be very wealthy, very successful, famous, and prominent. Many times they have newly acquired prosperity. They don’t really have needs, so they think.
JER 2:19, “Your own wickedness will correct you, And your apostasies will reprove you; Know therefore and see that it is evil and bitter For you to forsake the Lord your God.”
PRO 1:31, “So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way, And be choked with their own devices.”
Without enforced humility and objectivity, it is impossible for these people to take the hard road back.
When the solutions are not readily available and require months and sometimes even years of positive volition and daily decisions and maintaining the right priorities, Bible doctrine first, obviously there is a tremendous difficulty.
They begin to look for things to alleviate the pain and suffering from divine discipline and self induced misery.
Therefore, they become pursuers in pleasure;
They try to find interest in life,
They try to find new friends,
They try to find an environment of flattery,
or some social structure where they are admired.
Whatever success they have in life.
Whatever moment of stimulation may come their way.
Whatever nice group of people they happen to meet somewhere, so different from that group at church.
Whatever they find by way of a love relationship,
or friendship, or success and approbation from mankind in general.
Whatever they find in these areas are simply not a solution to their problem.
This means that Seeking pleasure, Seeking new friends, Seeking new scenes, Seeking a new environment, Seeking new things, None of these things can help the lukewarm believer.
There must be the principle of 1JO 1:9 or 1CO 11:31, But if we judged ourselves rightly, we should not be judged.
There must be the confessing of sin, 1JO 1:9.
The forgetting of the sin, PHI 3:13-14.
And the isolation of sin, HEB 12:15.
It is Confess, 1JO 1:9
Judge self, 1CO 11:31
Present your physical body, ROM 6:13
Lay aside every weight,
HEB 12:1
Submit to the Father,
HEB 12:9
Put away guilt, HEB 12:12.
Get back in the PPOG,
HEB 12:13.
Separate from other lukewarm believers, EPH 5:14.
Put off the old man, EPH 4:22.
Put on the new man, EPH 4:24.
That motivation generally has to come from two categories of discipline: Warning discipline and intensive discipline.
In solving any major problem in life, it requires consistent daily decisions based on having the right priorities.
As the Potter over the clay, the believer who has this sought of passion for God is one who has passion and love for TLJC and also fulfills 1CO 16:22 and never falls into REV 3:15-16.
1CO 16:22, If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed. Maranatha.
The word for love is the pres-act-ind of phileo which means a personal, more passionate love that is pleasurable and precious experientially as well as emotionally.
It has the connotation of a love that is more emotionally dependent and therefore, in the invisible realm, it connotes an emphasis on the personal.
What is fruit?
Fruit is a changed life, a Christ centered life, a life where we have died to ourselves so that Christ will live through us, GAL 2:19-20.
Godly fruit is a life that seeks to satisfy God rather than self or people. A life whose central theme, focus and priority is the plan of God.
EPH 2:10, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
God has already prepared the good works in which we should walk; He has already gifted each one us uniquely, like a tree planted and destined to make fruit.
Whether our works are fruitful or not depends upon whether our outward man has been broken by the Lord so that the inward man can pass through that brokenness and come forth.
The Lord wants to break our outward man in order that the inward man may have a way out. When the inward man is released, both unbelievers and Christians will be blessed.
JOH 12:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Life is in the grain of wheat, but there is a shell, a very hard shell on the outside of that wheat which is called the grain.
As long as that shell is not split open, the wheat cannot grow.
Except the grain of wheat falling into the ground die…
What is this death?
It is the cracking open of the shell through the working together of temperature, humidity, etc., in the soil.
Once the shell is split open, the wheat begins to grow.
The question is not whether there is life within, but whether the outside shell is cracked open enough.
JOH 12:24-25, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal.”