Prosperity Testing and Self-Deception -
Review. 1 Kings 11:1
The soul fortress: four basic principles
- Construction of the soul fortress takes a
lifetime. We don’t see it, this is just the imperceptible
reality of edification in our souls. In Ephesians Paul talks about the
fact that Scripture is designed to edify the believer. This has the idea
of building up or strengthening our soul. What strengthens
our souls is principles from the Word of God, and this takes a lifetime.
It has to be a priority.
- The construction is piecemeal and dynamic—a little
here and a little there. Every time we study the Word doctrines are either
confirmed or presented new—we gain insight, the Holy Spirit uses it is a
new way—and it is a continuing ongoing process. It is dynamic because we
are learning in the context of the laboratory of real life. It doesn’t
follow a set course; we don’t have to master the faith-rest drill before
we can go on to doctrinal orientation, etc.
- The utilisation of the spiritual skills enables
us to stay inside the fortress. As we practice these skills when we face
adversity and prosperity we stay inside the fortress, which is the same
thing as staying in fellowship. When we stop applying these principles and
utilising these skills then we start living on the basis of the sin
nature, start living on the basis of human viewpoint strategies and
techniques to make life work; therefore we are vulnerable to damage from
sin, the world and the devil.
- When we fail to utilise the spiritual skills we
default. It is a fall-back position to the arrogance skills, and these are
the total opposite. We are either operating under and
developing the arrogance skills or the spiritual skills.
Arrogance always starts with
self-absorption. That leads to self-deception. The unbeliever and the carnal
believer want to reshape the external world so that it is not the world God
says it is bit it is the world that we want it to be. We want it to march to
our tune and not follow the patterns that God has established. This, of course,
leads to self-deification; we want to be the ultimate authority. And we
practice these skills over and over and over again, and by the time a child is
four years old it has mastered it, and has a Ph D in arrogance! So the pattern
for the spiritual life is to be able to identify these things on the one hand,
and that is part of the exercise we go through with confession of sin. In the
practice of confession of sin we are training ourselves to identify the
arrogance pattern that we see in our soul. So the spiritual skills have to be
learned and developed in contrast to the arrogance skills.
The foundation has to do with
the filling of the Spirit, which is really the second spiritual skill. The
first one is how we become filled with the Spirit. When we are first saved we
are automatically filled with the Spirit. Then when we sin we are out of
fellowship, outside of the soul fortress, and no longer operating on the
direction of God the Holy Spirit. The filling of the Spirit is a passive concept.
The command in Ephesians 5:18 is to be filled—passive imperative.
That means that someone else performs the action. The subject of the command,
you and I, receives the action. So we are to be filled, but the flip side of
that which is really addressed to our ongoing, moment by moment volition, is to
walk by the Spirit—a present active imperative which engages our volition more
directly as we have to actively walk in dependence upon God the Holy Spirit.
- At salvation every believer is indwelt and filled
by means of the Holy Spirit. There is a difference between the content and
the means. The Holy Spirit is the instrument by which we are filled; it is
the Word of God that is the content of the filling. It is the Word of God
that is used in our spiritual life and spiritual growth. There are
different terms that are used in the Bible that are roughly synonymous or
they look at different facets of the same thing: walking by the Spirit,
abiding in Christ, being filled by the Spirit, walking in the light,
walking in the truth. These are all terms that are expressing the same
idea from slightly different vantage points.
- Whatever is done in the power of the Holy Spirit is
gold, silver and precious stones and have eternal value. The Holy Spirit
is the primary means of power and enablement for the spiritual life. But
the Holy Spirit doesn’t operate alone, he always operates
in conjunction with the Word of God. Colossians 3:16 gives a parallel command to Ephesians 5:18: “Let
the word of Christ dwell richly in you.” The same results come from
letting the Word of Christ dwell in us as being filled with the Holy
Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who fills us with some, and the something He
fills us with is the Word. He helps us to understand, retain, remember and
apply Bible doctrine; He is the one who produces spiritual growth.
- The next step is learning to trust God on a day
to day basis in terms of the situations we face, learning to put our faith
in the Lord and resting in His provision. We get a definition of faith in
Hebrews 11:1 NASB “Now faith is the assurance of {things} hoped
for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith doesn’t operate after we
are dead. When we die we are face to face with the Lord and we are seeing
the heavenly reality, so faith in only operational during our time on
earth. [3] “By faith we understand …” Faith is a means of knowledge, it is
not in opposition to knowledge. Defining the faith-rest drill: it is the
believer trusting God to fulfil His promises, relying upon Biblical
principles, and thinking through doctrinal rationales. It results in a relaxed
mental attitude because we know God takes care of the situation. 1 Peter
5:7 NASB “casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for
you.” Because God cares for us we can put a situation in His hands and
relax, because no matter what the outcome is he is in control. Hebrews 4:2
NASB “For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as
they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not
united by faith in those who heard.” That is the key verse for the
faith-rest drill; we mix our faith with the promises of God. Proverbs 3:5,
6 NASB “Trust in the LORD with all your heart And
do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways
acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths
straight.” He will straighten things out and take you where He wants you
to go.
- Grace orientation is one of the most difficult
concepts for people to get their hand around because it runs completely counter
to our whole self-absorbed, arrogant nature. We live in a world that
operates on a tit-for-tat policy, that everything is based on works and performance;
but grace is never based on works or performance, grace is based on the
character of God. When we are being grace oriented to other people it is a
misnomer to say we are going to treat people on the basis of who and what we are. We are to treat people on the
basis of what God is. That is our pattern. We are, as Paul says in
Ephesians 4, to forgive one another as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven
us. The focal point is looking at who Jesus Christ is. Grace orientation
is patterning our responses to people around us on the pattern of His
grace. i) Grace orientation is conforming or
aligning our thinking, the whole way in which we relate to people and circumstances,
with God’s grace policy. ii) Grace means that God is free to give us
everything we need on the basis of who he is and what Christ did on the
cross—He did everything for us while we were yet sinners. iii) Grace means
that God will freely give us everything we need in our spiritual life. He
gives us prosperity tests, adversity tests, everything we need in order to
mature us, to conform us to the image of Jesus
Christ. iv) Grace means that our relationship to
God is not based on merit, activity or action. So we are responding to
this grace but we are not trying to manipulate His grace. Key passages: 2
Peter 1:3, 4 NASB “seeing that His divine power has granted to
us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge
of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by
these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that
by them you may become partakers of {the} divine nature, having escaped
the corruption that is in the world by lust.” 2 Peter 3:18 NASB “but grow in the grace and
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…” 2
Corinthians 12:9 NASB “And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected
in weakness.’”
- Doctrinal orientation. This is when we align our
thinking to the plan and purposes of God and His Word. It takes a lifetime
to wrestle with what God tells us in His Word, to understand these things.
And even when we think we do we need to hear them over and over and over
again so that we don’t forget them. We constantly need that encouragement
and that review. Doctrinal orientation by definition is to align our
thinking to the reality of God’s Word, God’s creation and God’s plan. We
must understand that doctrine must become a way of life. If we haven’t
reached that point then we are still spiritual infants. Doctrine is life.
That’s it, period. A walk with the Lord isn’t just something we do like
having a job, family, a hobby. Doctrine glues it all together and without
it everything is irrelevant. Doctrine includes the whole realm of Bible
teaching, from what we would call the abstract to the intensely practical.
Truth in its abstract form is intensely practical or it is not true.
Anything that is practical has to be understood from its theoretical (more
abstract) foundation, otherwise when we get into circumstances we don’t
understand why we are doing what we are doing, we are just following a
rote set of steps. Doctrine teaches us how to think, how to react, so that
when something happens we react differently, our mind is engaged
differently. Doctrine teaches us how to problem-solve, how to think it
through, how to prioritise, how to relate to the world and the systems around
us. We have to know the whole realm of doctrine. 2 Peter 3:18; Romans
12:2.