Thoughts
on Michael Wells’ teachings in My Weakness for His Strength (Vol. 1) - #
359
Michael’s book is
available through:
ABIDING LIFE MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL
Littleton, Colorado
(303) 972-0859 www.abidinglife.com
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For those of you who have not read today’s writing
before now, I think you will find it very interesting. It is complex, but not
complicated. The Mind of Christ will easily take you to Truth.
Michael gives us dimensions, glasses, and a couple
of challenges. I wonder how you will do…
DAY 284
The Multi-Faceted God
May it never be! Rather,
let God be found true, though every man {be found} a liar, as it is written,
THAT THOU MIGHTEST BE JUSTIFIED IN THY WORDS, AND MIGHTEST PREVAIL WHEN THOU
ART JUDGED.
--Romans 3:4
Matthew 6:26, “Look
at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather
into barns, and {yet} your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much
more than they?”
Yet I have watched
birds starve to death in the winter months.
Matthew 6:28, 29,
“And why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field
grow; they do not toil nor do they spin; yet I say to you that even Solomon in
all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these.”
In the interior of
Liberia the locals were afraid to return to church, for they did not have
clothes. They had lost them in the war.
Proverbs 22:6, “Train
up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from
it.” Many, many parents have done all that they knew to do, and yet their
children departed from the Lord.
Psalm 121:7, “The
LORD will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul.”
History is replete
with the stories of millions of martyrs that died at the hands of evil men.
I could continue with
the illustrations, but I am sure you get the point. Let God be true, but what
do the facts say? The simple answer is that you must believe God when bad
happens. The emphasis is on belief, and yet believing is exactly what the
believer was doing, believing God for food, clothing, protection, and a child
that would be blessed. Is the Christian to believe God’s words or believe that
God causes all things to work together for good? Which is it?
We live in a world of
dimensions. I have seen Mount Everest! I have, and I will argue the point; I
saw it with my own eyes in Nepal. However, the mountaineer would beg to differ,
saying that I only saw one side of Mount Everest, and therefore I did not
really see it. To see it, I would have to walk around it, climb it, and
possibly look under it. I am, to them, less than a novice. I bumped into former
President Ford one day. As I was leaving the restroom he was entering. “I know
President Ford! President Ford has met me.” Do I? Has he? Is it not interesting
that as dimensional creatures we insist on being non-dimensional or one-sided
in our views? If someone is employed to paint and it is discovered that he is
not a good painter, he is dismissed with the words, “You are worthless!” Is he
worthless? Later that same person attends university, becomes a physicist, then
a Nobel Prize recipient. Yes, but he could not paint; he was labeled worthless.
My point is that Church history is replete with examples of teachers, scholars,
and preachers that are non-dimensional when it comes to God. They have never
walked around God, so to speak. They only see one side of Him, and if something
comes at them from another side, they manipulate it until it fits their
single-minded view of Him. Ecclesiastes 11:5, “Just as you do not know the path
of the wind and how bones {are formed} in the womb of the pregnant woman, so
you do not know the activity of God who makes all things.” Some evangelists,
teachers, and others only see the provision side of God. They preach Him as the
great general store in the sky. Whatever someone may want is his if he has the
faith. Their airplanes, diamonds, and wealth prove it. If that is their
single-sided view of God -- God created man to give to him, and that is all God
does -- then this single-sided view will eventually drive them into deception,
manipulation of Scripture, self-image protection, and shipwreck. Of course they
will be presented with Scriptures that are “outside the box” of what they see
God as being. If a person sees God non-dimensionally as the Great Physician
only, a variety of blame will be heaped on the sick, illness in his own family
will have to be spiritualized away, and again more Scripture distorted and
twisted.
What glasses do we
wear when looking at God? Can we take time to walk around the mountain, climb
on top, and mine underneath? If our awareness of God embraces the fact that He
is multi-faceted, we will see each Bible passage as part of a giant jigsaw
puzzle that reflects God. We will see that all things work together because God
is in all things. We will see that only God can do what God does.
I like kit cars. They
come in hundreds of pieces in a huge container with three-dimensional diagrams;
a one-dimensional diagram would be useless. The job is to use a variety of
tools to put together the automobile, using the exact tool for each exact job.
It is impossible to find the one tool that will do everything. Oh, people claim
to make all-purpose tools! However, at some point the user throws it to the
ground in disgust.
The day Jesus
received me I was in pieces. No one would have imagined that I was made in His
image! Who would think I was a Son of God, holy, righteous, acceptable, and
equipped for every good work? He set about to put me together. The tool that He
used would be the perfect tool for that day and purpose. It would have been the
wrong tool for the next day, but He does everything in order. My
multi-dimensional God has such a vast array of tools, every one true and every
tool absolute. In His tool chest are sickness and health, wealth and poverty,
good and bad, mercy and judgment, love and hate, wounding and healing, broken
relationships and mended ones, adornment and nakedness, excluded and included,
decreasing and increasing, pruning and reaping, giving and taking, drought and
rain, sanity and insanity, rebelliousness and compliance, death and life, and I
could go on. If someone does not believe that these are His tools, I can show a
Scripture for each one that proves they are. Job is a good example in that God
used good and bad to perfect him. Hebrews 1:3, “And He is the radiance of His
glory and the exact representation
of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” Jesus was
never one-sided. He was putting every man back together. See Him use a unique
tool on a unique person. He was love but not the one-dimensional love that man
has and perceives.
Stop seeing so
one-dimensionally! Stop protecting your limited view of God! Start trusting
that God is putting you together. To begin your journey out of a flat world,
start by taking a walk around Jesus. If a passage does not make sense to you,
if it has not been your experience or you do not see how it fits into the
whole, do not just stand there! Walk around Jesus and look at Him from a
different angle; it all fits perfectly. The passages mentioned at the beginning
of the article are for a particular time, to accomplish a particular task in
our lives. If a passage applied all the time we would be thwarted and never
grow into the revelation of Christ. I am not copping out! Look at your own
life! In times of darkness and need you grew up in Christ. Generally Christians
define love one way, but for Jesus every act--from cleansing the temple to
healing the leper--was one of love. James 1:17 reminds us that “every good
thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow.”
Yellow – VIP, Very Important Point Green
– IT, Incredible Truth
Red – GP, Greatest Promises
Turquoise – UR, Unfathomable Riches Pink
– PV, Priceless Victory
(no highlighting this
week. you get to decide what words you would color as such.)
God is Truth. Therefore, He will always be
found Truth (I don’t use true very
much any more…some of you know why).
I would love to know what glasses you are now
wearing, and how dimensional you are
now seeing!
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NOTICE: another blog on
Michael Wells’ book, Sidetracked In The Wilderness, called Getting Out of the
Wilderness. You can access by logging onto
www.leemcchristianministries.blogspot.com
Lee McDowell Christian Ministries
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