He Walks Among His Lampstands – Part 1

(Rev. 2&3)

He is still walking among His lampstands today.  The messages addressed to those seven churches of Asia still apply to His church.  It is noteworthy that the Lord Jesus Himself addresses John while he is a prisoner under an oppressive hand.  We might say that the Lord arranged these unfavorable circumstances purposely to get John alone and undistracted.  However, that perspective would ignore the presence of our enemy.  While satan and wicked men meant it for evil, God meant it for good.  Such was the platform the Lord used to open John’s eyes to this awesome revelation of Himself and what was to take place.  Jesus uses the word mystery in His introduction.  It is our glory to search out the hidden things of God, of His purposes.  A divine revelation is needed.  The Lord responded as John was seeking Him.  And I am sure John was not expecting the awesome adventure that was about to begin.

How easily we can run after such knowledge or experience and leave Him behind.  That was His message to the Ephesians.  They are the first church which is addressed.  Jesus first acknowledges things pleasing to Him.  It strikes me that He included perseverance which we often see as critical for our lives.  Without Him, all our works come to nothing.  Ephesus was the church which Paul wrote to some years before.  That letter is filled with wonderful understanding of the Lord’s working and purpose in us His people.  Yet this first church addressed by Jesus has left their first love.  I am thinking they were so caught up in the understanding they had, they had lost Him.  The Lord tells them to do the first works.  What were these?  Prayer?  Seeking Him?  Loving Him?  I am not certain but I expect all these were part of it.  One word to today’s church is; we are His bride and He is looking for deep, intimate relationship.  He is worthy of all our love and affection.

The lampstand was the light within the holy place of the tabernacle and then the temple.  The fuel for the light was oil formulated from detailed divine specifications.  It is not hard to understand that the oil represents the Holy Spirit, the oil which anoints and is the very presence of the Lord.  For the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is release.  I used the word release in place of the usual word liberty.  Liberty in our culture has often meant license.  Do what seems good to you is not the way God’s kingdom operates.  We need to be in tune with the Holy Spirit and allow Him to lead.  The Spirit shines the true light.  We have all at one time or another distorted that light.  We learn and seek a pure light to shine through us.  The lampstand is that which represents the Lord Himself.  It is another picture of us as true ambassadors of the kingdom of God.  It represents a true witness, a true testimony of Jesus Christ.

This passage from Revelation addresses churches, groups of believers, and each message is directed to those in a particular region.  For me, in the day in which we live, I believe the Lord Himself brought these particular messages knowing they would all apply to His churches, His lampstands, in these final days.  The church, His bride, is yet being matured and finished.  She is the vessel through which He shines into the earth to attract whoever is willing to come to Him.  The regional aspect I see as showing us that He the Lord Jesus views His people this way.  It is critically important that we have a personal, intimate relationship to Him.  He is displaying His glory to principalities and powers over regions and is displacing them as we grow together unto Him.  We are like trees (see Ps. 1), even great redwoods, reaching toward the One who is our light, like the sun is for the natural tree.

And He is also the ground, the foundation into which our individual and corporate roots must grow down.  That growing down speaks of the need for a greater and greater humility.  It is all about the Lamb receiving glory and honor and all that He has paid for.  I believe that as each message closes with this call, “Let him who has ears to hear, hear what the Spirit says,”  the Lord is addressing individuals within those regional churches.  Will we hear, will we listen, will we continue on to overcome whatever the hindrances may be?  Will we receive His correction?  I see this as corporate as well as individual overcoming.  We are overcoming together.

Do we see this?  Living connections within the body of Christ are essential.  We need true fellowship with others who have ears to hear, and are responding to the Lord.  More and more I am challenged that my walk matches the reality of who Christ is and what He has accomplished.  I want to see His lampstands flourish and be rightly connected.  If we say He abides in us we should walk even as He walked.  We are called to walk, to conduct ourselves, worthy of the calling with which he called us.  In all humility, preferring one another.  This is the taking up of our cross daily.  Not according to our own thinking but as led by His Spirit.  We must hear what the Spirit is saying.  If we are seeking Him, He will surely give us those ears to hear.  May He open our eyes to see like John saw.

Have You Passion?

(Rev. 3:14-19, Jude 20-21)

Seven years ago, I was working in southern Illinois on an 11 month assignment.  My daughter had been to the International House of Prayer in Kansas City and wanted to visit again.  She flew in from NJ and I drove across Missouri to meet her.  It was my first visit and I had some familiarity with their ministry.  If you are unaware I encourage you to visit their website at ihopkc.  They encourage prayer and worship and have a prayer room that has been continuously focused on Jesus Christ, 24/7 for over 15 years.  During my drive to KC the Lord turned my attention away from myself and toward my daughter.  He said this weekend was about her and not about me.  He was setting me up.

As we sat in the prayer room, I was awakened to a level of the love of Jesus Christ for me I had not known.  This was far beyond what I had experienced before.  We often speak about breakthrough.  We are right and in pursuit of God’s purpose for us when we seek to be free.  Our seeking in itself is a humbling and repentance.  I had real deliverance from fears and self-effacement.  Our enemy will often turn us inward on ourselves.  I experienced the passionate love of Christ for me as part of His bride.  I knew that intimacy that makes one feel like they are the Shunamite of Song of Songs.  I had known this in measure but now I knew it deeply, at a new level.  It was a life changing experience.  It was a fresh beginning of true unity with the Lord’s love and purpose in my life.

It put a fire in me and gave me an intensity I had not known before.  The Lord, by His Spirit, was preparing me for a launch that initiated in 2013.  The year in between saw personal failure in a failed marriage.  It was sad but we saw much grace.  In this life, human failures happen and we must continue to pursue love, His true love.  I learned passion from and for Him.  Jesus Christ Himself carries us through all kinds of loss, including failed relationships.  May God redeem every broken relationship for His name’s sake.  Maintaining His passion is the focus I am learning through this and my continued journey.

How do we maintain the passion?  How did we find it in the first place?  Did we initiate it?  We received Jesus and with that experience we began to know His love for us.  The more we receive that love, the more we love back.  The more time spent in His presence, the more we are joined to Him in experience and the more we learn to move in His purpose.  The fire is His passionate love for us and it flows back to Him the source.  He draws us more and more to Himself.  He is the fire.

Many have found the importance of this prayer, out of the Psalms, “Search me and know me.”  Open to Him and let Him expose all the dark and ugly places still hiding in your soul.  They are offensive to you, and would be to others if exposed.  The more we know His cleansing and find His steadfast love, the more we love Him.  The one who is forgiven much, loves much.  He doesn’t search us to condemn.  He searches to cleanse every stain.  As His refining fire works to burn away our self-centeredness, we find His life in us is revealed.  Christ in us the hope of glory.

Children want to please their parents.  While, with our human natures, we can manipulate our parents, we cannot fool God.  If we come to Him to manipulate we will find frustration.  It can bring us to a tantrum or pity party.  Don’t stay there.  When I have found myself there I cry out and ask God to fix me, save me.  Yes I am saved but still in the process. (Phil. 2:12-13)  And the process is bringing us to rest in Him.  We lose the notion that we of ourselves can please God, our Father.  It is God at work in us to will, and to do for His good pleasure.  The result for us is joy unspeakable and full of glory.  We experience His glory, His pleasure in us.

I repeat what I wrote in my previous post.  It is not time for lethargy and lukewarm living.  We individually need the fire to never go out on the altar of our hearts.  This is another way of saying, be being filled with the Spirit.  When we are allowing His Spirit to fill us, we overflow.  When the fire is burning with passion in our hearts, it is like a fire in our bones and it will come out.  Keep your door, the door of your inner man, the door of your heart open to Him.  He will come in and be your fire.  And most wonderful it is that if we maintain, we experience His continual presence.  That is joy unspeakable.