WE NEED TO GROW
The second type of perfection is found in Matthew 19:21, “Jesus said to him, ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow Me.” This type of perfection has nothing to do with defilement, but has to do with growing. We cannot be perfect if we do not grow. We have to grow in our emotions, our mind, our spirit, and we cannot grow in only one part of our lives. We have to grow in the trinity that we are, otherwise one part will over power the other. I have seen men and woman who have tremendous revelation, but in their emotions they are little children. They will not have the ability to release the spiritual revelation properly because they have never developed in their manhood or womanhood. When we are not mature, the revelation itself will be something abstract and not relevant.
We do not need abstract revelation that is not relevant to our lives or circumstances. I have asked God to stretch me and move me, so that I am able to interpret the revelation with my body language, with my action, with my eyes, and with my decisions. We can have great revelation, but our decisions can be childish. We have not been stretched to the revelation, and instead of becoming the interpreter of the revelation of God; our emotions have become an interrupter of the flow of the Spirit of God. We have not grown to the place that we can be an interpreter of God’s power and eternal life. This body is not a dam, but a flow of life, to interpret the eternal life within us.
In this Scripture in Matthew 19, Jesus speaks to a young man who came to him and asked, “How do I find eternal life?” That is a good question? How do I have a flow of life and not just an existence? When we exist, we pray to live for all the added things. When I have a flow of life my prayer is not “God give me”, but my prayer is a communication of a level of the Spirit that is born of the Spirit and by the Spirit, so that I don’t waist my prayer life on the things that I think I need.
How do we get to that place where we know the Father and trust in His ways? What does the young man say, “I keep the law, I keep all the commandments.” In other words, he does not do the “don’ts.” He does not commit adultery; he does not steal, and so on. We do the same. We don’t do certain things that are considered sin, but the question is what do we do. We don’t commit adultery, but do we love our wife? We don’t steal, but do we give? We don’t lie, but do we live the truth? Our confinements in our Christian walk are centered on the “don’ts” in our lives. We are recognized by the things that we don’t do, instead of the things we do. How do we become a doer? If I do love the Lord with all my strength and my mind and love my neighbor as myself, I won’t need to think about the “don’ts” because the don’t are restrictions while the “dos” give me liberty. Today the body of Christ is totally restricted because our Christianity is based on the “don’ts” and not on the “dos.”
Jesus said if you want to grow into be perfection, you have to go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor. Why didn’t Jesus say just give what you have to the poor, why sell all? The reason is, that he would not have known the value of what he had. Some of us have given God lots of things that we hate and it has no value to us, but we still want to give it to God. “Oh God, I hate who I am, but still use me.” Thousands of Christians hate their lives, but they still want to give their lives to God. God will never use our life if we do not accept the value He has placed on us. We have only one life to live and one life to give to God. If we hate our life, it has no value.
If you have apiece of old furniture you want to give away, and you go to an antic store and find out that the piece of furniture is worth a great deal, you will not give it away that easily. To some of us, our lives have the same value as a piece of junk. What does our life mean to us? Are we just going to give the left over from the things we do not like? Are we going to preserve the best for us and give God what we don’t like?
Church history suggests that the rich young man was Barnabas. Barnabas had no power to give his possessions; even he was in the presence of God. He saw Jesus talk to the disciples and he saw the miracles, yet he had not the strength to release his possession. It says he went away sorrowful with a lack of growth. It is said, as the Holy Spirit was poured out and as Ananias and Sapphira tried to betray the Holy Spirit, one of these men who gave everything to the apostles was Barnabas. He must have had an inner revelation of eternal life. Barnabas means an encourager, and he was the one who called Saul and was part of the motivation why Saul turned into Paul. Barnabas grew beyond his riches. His life became more worth than his money or his tradition.
In His Love,
Sigi
Devotions
Posted: January 2005