The big beginning is not the end.

Salvation as we know it in the evangelical church is not the end. We have not arrived once we give our lives to Christ. In reality, it’s just barely the beginning. Now it certainly is a BIG beginning and the greatest event, greatest decision, and greatest opportunity even to happen to mankind. But it is still just a starting point.

The ending: That great beginning is so tremendous, and the race so extensive in longevity that it will not be complete until either the coming of Christ or we get called up to meet Him when we die.

So, although I had a supernatural change on Sept.4, 1974, the night I asked our Lord Jesus Christ into my heart, there has been a continual process of seeing myself still in the making. And for sure and certain, I am excited that God is not through with me yet.

Christ is still being formed in me as He is in you. When we move in word (what we say), deed (what we do) or thought (what we are thinking) we do so from the inadequacies of one who is still partially formed, as one who is not fully formed into the image of our Savior and King.

My hope that gives encouragement is that God is more committed to getting me there then I am. He is committed to me being presented to Him as His inheritance, pure, spotless and without blame. Any attempt of mine to get to and maintain this would be the "religion of self" and being holy in my own eyes. But if I do as Paul says and die to self daily then Christ can live His life in and through me. This was what John the Baptist meant when he said that he had to decrease so that Christ would increase.
  
Galatians 4:19 ESV  my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.

Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV  Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,  (2)  looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

So run the race, be faithful, we are all a work in progress.

THE FATHER'S GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK:
Versus
OUR GAME OF SIMON SAYS

We have speaking about abiding, and learning to abide in Christ.

 "To Abide"  The Greek word is "menō". Abiding means "to stay in a given place, a given state, a given relationship or a given expectancy: To abide is to continue, dwell, endure, be present, remain, stand, and tarry.

There are verses in the N.T. which many believers use incorrectly because of who the Scriptures are written for. One example is 1 Jn.1:9 which is a key verse for believers on how to maintain fellowship with the Father, although many in the body of Christ use it on lost people as a "soul-winning" verse.

1 John 1:9 ESV  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Another one misused a lot is Jn.8:32 as we go around quoting it like it is a magic wand verse to make everything okay.

John 8:32 ESV  and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

However Jn.8:32 is not a stand alone verse. It is in connection with Jn.8:31 which makes it an abiding verse.

John 8:31-32 ESV  So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,  (32)  and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

So the process of growth goes in this order after salvation. Learn to abide (stay in the place of, in the state of, in relationship with, and in expectancy), in the Word then we become (are made into) His disciples. Then as disciples we will know different truths about different things. All of the things where we have truth in, we are set free from.  But, all this starts with the believer abiding in God's Word.

GOD'S GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK:

I have a friend who made a statement to me years ago: "The Father plays hide and seek with me." It was the first time I every heard this statement and I didn't know how to take. Then I realized there are many Scriptures about finding the Lord only as we seek Him.

God is everywhere, which embraces our doctrine of the Omnipresence of God. This is one trait that defines the greatness of our Heavenly Father.  Yet, although God is all present, there are literally hundreds of Scriptures commanding us to seek Him.
 
The Lord may overwhelm us and blesse us with His incredible presence today. However, tomorrow He may step back a pace, and say, "Find Me here!" Then we, in the attitude of seeking must press into that new position. The following day He steps further back and says, "Follow Me here." And so on to the fullness of the stature of Christ.

GOD PLAYING HIDE AND SEEK, WHILE WE PLAY SIMON SAYS:
This is what it means to abide in Christ. We are to seek and go where He is each day. This kind of rubs us wrongly when we are in the habit of going to our places which we call "sanctuaries" and almost demand God's presence to come to us and bless, in whatever we are doing. It is like we are playing the game of "Simon says" with God and telling Him what He is to do next. Ouch!

Abiding is not an option and it is not a "One Time Good Deal." It is a continual process.

1 John 2:23-25 ESV  No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.  (24)  Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.  (25)  And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.

Our abiding in Christ today is different from our abiding in Him a year ago. More is required of us as we grow in knowledge and grace. Sins we practiced unknowingly a year ago are not permitted today. The self-love in which we indulged a year ago is not acceptable today. The Lord Jesus challenges us each day to a fuller abiding in Himself. Think of growing from a baby to a toddler to a young child to a teenager to a man.

As a 16 month-old it was expected that you eat with your fingers and leave a large mess around your plate, on the floor and across your face. But at 16 years old, all of that is unexpected and unacceptable behavior.

So the next time you are praying or crying out to the Lord and you can't seem to sense His presence, go ahead and enter the game of hide and seek with Him and seek Him out instead of demanding that He comes to your party. 

Matthew 6:33 ESV  But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

It's all about abiding.

"To Abide"  The Greek word is "menō". Abiding means "to stay in a given place, a given state, a given relationship or a given expectancy: To abide is to continue, dwell, endure, be present, remain, stand, and tarry.

John 15:4-5 ESV  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.  (5)  I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

The fact is, through the wooing of the Holy Spirit, the God invited us to come to Him just as we were. He received us in Christ with all our sinful, self-seeking ways.

We were in no condition to abide in the Presence of God. We were naked and did not know it. We were poor and did not know it. We were blind and did not know it.

It was the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that has made our warm welcome before the Father possible. Jesus our Lord and Savor received our self-willed, sinful personality into His own Being as He took on our sins and our sin nature and gave us His nature. While hanging on the cross, He had received discord and rebellion and all nature of sin into Himself. He did this because He loves us, even in our sinful state.

Once we were saved it was not the work of the cross to "fix us." Our Lord did not die to repair old ADAM. He died to replace the old Adam within us with the last ADAM, which is His life. Salvation is not adding the Lord Jesus to our broken lives. Salvation is a life exchange, His life for ours. 

Once saved our Lord Jesus Christ begins to bring our personality into harmony with Himself until everything we were becomes absorbed by everything He is. Each day when we abide in Him there is a lesson in godliness presented to us. There is an evil of the heart that will be exposed and must be dealt with.

The process of not being conformed to the world but allowing ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our minds is taking place. This is not an easy process. Actually at times it can be quite painful because every sin and every trace of self-love and self-centeredness in us must be exposed to the fire of God. It is an internal transformation revealing an external new creation which the Father already called us.

NOTE: If this process of daily abiding in Christ was easy everyone would gladly do it.

As a believer it is more difficult as the days go by because of the increased demands. God did not ask Abraham for his son Isaac when his son was first born. Isaac was a young man and had walked with his Father many years before God asked Abraham to give him up.

​Moses did not stand before Pharaoh after just one year in the wilderness. It took 40 years in the wilderness for God to develop the type of trust and character in Moses to prepare him to stand before leaders and to lead a people. But it is true also that as the way gets harder we have increased spiritual wisdom and strength with those demands because we have learn to lean more on our Lord and draw from His strength. 

We should not be struggling to walk as moral individuals, looking and sounding like what we think Christians should be like. The fruit of righteousness should be naturally hanging from our lives.

John 15:4-6 ESV  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.  (5)  I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.  (6)  If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

Much of the current preaching today admonishes us to obtain and hold on to our "ticket to heaven" simply by "praying this prayer." However, is this the message of the cross and salvation? Belief in the Biblical teachings of the blood atonement and the resurrection from the dead must go beyond "pray this prayer" to be what God defines as "saving faith." But what is the fruit?

There has been way too much preaching and teaching that hell is only for the demons and that none of mankind will go there, because God's love is greater than His judgment. There has been too much preaching and teaching concerning the possibility of a "second chance" for salvation if we miss the first one. This means that if we miss it here it's okay because we will have another chance to be saved either right after the "rapture," if Jesus returns in our lifetime, or during the judgment time.

There are no Scriptural evidences that God's "saving grace" operates during the judgment period. There is also NO saving grace taking place after we die. The reason I felt a need to share this is because of some of our media inputs about how God operates. In most westerns or older movies when someone dies the preacher or someone speaking over the gravesite always prays that the Lord would kindly receive them into heaven. A lot of funerals today are like this. It is like a concerned uncle (the preacher) is sending his niece or nephew (the deceased) to Grandfather's (God), house (heaven) to enjoy a long extended vacation. But what is the fruit?

Remember, the gospel message is good news/bad news. The good news is the message of salvation to all who place their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His work on the cross. The bad news is the judgment of God for all who reject and/or walk away from the good news. The penalty for not abiding in Christ is that we will be removed, cut off from the Vine about the Jn.15:4-6 passage we read earlier. 

Many go through life with the hope of being allowed admission someway into Paradise when they die, but they are not abiding carefully and consistently in Christ with a heart of continual faith. We do not have to strain to bear fruit. The fruit of godliness is the natural result of abiding consistently and continually in Christ. God is not looking for us to strain to be moral people. He is looking for the fruit of righteousness that should be naturally hanging from our lives.

I AM saved...I AM BEING saved...I WILL BE saved.

John 15:1-2 ESV  “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.  (2)  Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

The teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles focused on three things: (1) Justification: How do we gain eternal life, which requires receiving Christ. I AM SAVED in my spirit-man; (2) Sanctification: Continually walking in righteous behavior with a life of faith and growing in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. I AM BEING SAVED in my soulish man, (how I think, how I feel, and how I choose). (3) Glorification: The final act of salvation and rewards in the Day of the Lord, in the day when our Lord Jesus returns to earth. I WILL BE SAVED in my physical man as I put off the mortal and put on the new immortal body. I put off that which is corrupted and put on that which is incorruptible.

Although there are some Scriptures giving limited revelation on the subject about what happens to us when we die, most Scriptures are about how we should live here now. There are ample Scriptures with the emphasis on what happens to us when the Lord Jesus returns and the world as we know it ends and the new heaven and earth is established.

However, the majority of both the Old and New Testaments cover the subject of us living a life of righteousness, holiness, and obedience to God in this present world. This is learning to abide in God's Word and to abide in Christ. When the Apostles of the Lamb preached salvation they were speaking of not being destroyed in the Day of the Lord. The message of salvation was not meant to be a "feel-good" message. The reason that the gospel is "good-news" is because if we receive it we miss the "bad news" which is the judgment of God.

Acts 24:24-25 ESV  After some days Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, and he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus.  (25)  And as he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, “Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.”

The reason for Felix trembling was due to the conviction of the Holy Spirit about judgment. Felix would not have trembled at the salvation message preached in many places today which is only about the love of God. The salvation message must also include the judgment of God for those who reject God's grace.

Romans 2:4-5 ESV  Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?  (5)  But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

We would not stress this point except that it has a direct, practical bearing on how we live in the world. If we think of the Christian redemption as just being a plan for escaping Hell and having admission into Heaven when we die we do not understand the absolute necessity for abiding in Christ in our present life.

We can set under a preacher's teachings for so long, through church attendance, tapes, DVD's, TV, Internet, and other forms of media that the preacher/teacher becomes formed in us. This is certainly not to downgrade the ministry of the Pastor Teacher's role in our lives and the importance of the Word of God that is brought forth. it is about who is our point of focus and who is being formed into us and who are we being formed into. It was not the Apostle Paul's goal to have everyone to become like him. Although he wanted them to embrace the doctrine God had imparted to him, it was Paul's desire to see believers walk like, talk like, think like and live like the Lord Jesus Christ.  

We are called to be formed into Christ and to have His life formed in us. This is part of the process of learning to abide in Christ. This will not happen overnight, or in a month, or year. It is a lifelong process that starts with us hearing the Words of our Lord. This means that sometimes we must filter the words that are spoken that are not Biblical, not spiritual, and does not align with the character of our Father. Until then we need to hear. If we wait until the one who is speaking, teaching, or preaching is fully formed in us before we listen, we will never hear anything. In other words we keep the words of our Lord until He is completely formed in us. 

Galatians 4:18-19 ESV  It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you,  (19)  my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!

Romans 8:29 ESV  For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
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In the process of having Christ formed in us we will gain a truth of the Word of God. In our minds we may think it is the total truth concerning a passage of Scripture or a Bible figure or a topic or doctrine within the Scriptures. It may take years for us to realize that what we heard and read we were only able to understand and embrace a portion. The truth should continue to grow in us as we continue the process of abiding. The danger comes when we plant a fence around our small particle of truth and declare that we shall not be moved. The hearing of truth stops and the growing stops.

Every time I keep thinking I’m about “there” in my life I find that I go through a set of new doctrine changes, and a maturing process. I look back to who I was 15, 20, 30, or 40 years ago in Christ and today I have a hard time listening to some of the preaching and teaching I listened to back then. I have a hard time listening to myself in the teachings I gave 30 years ago, because I’ve changed so much. Yet, if asked 20 or 30 years ago I would have stated that I believed that I had it all together.

The issue in remaining in a state of abiding in Christ is to test the Spirit. Is Christ residing there on the inside and is Christ speaking or are the words I'm hearing are a small truth wrapped with the doctrines of man and religion? Is Christ moving in the my spirit or is my flesh being tickled and appeased? 

If you have been with me any length of time or have heard me teach or have read anything I have written, you will occasionally hear my “old man” come through. Don’t judge the Word of God or the Holy Spirit in me on the basis of my “old man.” If we tune into the Person of the Holy Spirit, He will guide us and continually teach us and move us from faith to faith, grace to grace and glory to glory. We have no need of any man to teach us because we are sons and daughters. But God uses teachers and evangelists and prophets and apostles and pastors in the body as an avenue where by the Holy Spirit might teach us. That’s why we need to listen to the Spirit first.

God the Father has planted a Vine. He is watching over it and taking care of it.

John 15:1-2 ESV  “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.  (2)  Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

The Vine is spiritual in nature however its fruit is visible in the earth. The fruit of the True Vine is righteousness and praise, and the fruit will appear in the sight of the nations of the earth.

Isaiah 61:11 ESV  For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the True Vine. We Christians are the branches which have been grafted in.

Romans 11:16-19 ESV  If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches.  (17)  But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree,  (18)  do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.  (19)  Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.”

God is looking for the fruit of righteousness in our lives, the fruit that is the image of His Son. The image of Christ is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is called the fruit of the Spirit but these are also the characteristics of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Kingdom of God. The fruit of the Holy Spirit are not emotions "fixed" in us by God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and His indwelling Spirit. The fruit of the Holy Spirit is God's nature. It is who He is. And He did not send His Son to die so that we (Old Adam) can be "fixed. He sent His Son so that we (the nature and ways of Old Adam) can be replaced. 

As we learn to abide IN Christ His Godly image begins to appear in and through our personality, changing us, and also in the personalities of those to whom we are ministering. In this abiding and bringing forth fruit, we are bringing forth the righteousness and praise, and the godliness of the Kingdom, in our own lives and in the lives of others.

As the Father has joined us to Christ we bring forth the fruit of righteousness of Christ in our lives. When the nations of the earth witness our righteousness in word, deed, and thought they will glorify God. God has called us to be the moral light of the world. He has called us to be the seasoning, the preserving, and the thirst causing result of being the salt of the world. If we do not exhibit the Father's righteousness and praise in our life, God will remove us from Christ.

John 15:2 ESV  Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Matthew 3:10 ESV  Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Matthew 15:13 ESV  He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up.

Matthew 21:18-19 ESV  In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry.  (19)  And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

Luke 8:13 ESV  And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away.

Romans 11:18-22 ESV  do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.  (19)  Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.”  (20)  That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear.  (21)  For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.  (22)  Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.