Natural Does Not Mean Effortless

 Some may say that worship is natural and easy for us because it is what we were designed for but just because we are designed for something does not mean it does not take effort to do it. Certain people were born with the type of body that would lend itself to the sport of basketball but anyone who has watched a game knows that those athletes are making a great effort and are paying for it with sweat, bruises and sometimes blood. In fact, the effort started long before those athletes hit the court.

Those players have spent years training and disciplining their bodies. They have had to gain certain muscles, which took work. They had to increase their skill level, which took work. They had to have a routine of sleep, eating, exercise and practice. The game may be natural to them but it took and takes great effort.

Worship is not a moment but a lifestyle. It is based on an attitude of thanksgiving and gratitude that develops from an acceptance of Father’s love. When we focus on the benefits of his love it shapes our heart response. We move from entering the gates with thanksgiving to being in his courts with praise. We were created with the capacity to worship but just like the athlete it requires a disciplined effort to remain in that place, and to grow in it.

Everything in this world is a natural enemy to us and our relationship with Father. The world, including humanity, is broken. Father did not create it to be like this but rebellion has twisted it into this ugliness. The enemy of our soul wants the worship we offer Father. The world bent under his false lordship will try to persuade us against it. Even our old nature will try to pull us away, keep us busy, make us feel ungrateful, depress us, make us feel tired, or convince us it’s okay to skip a day. Just as there are a thousand excuses to keep the athlete from his discipline, so too are there a thousand excuses to keep us from fulfilling the purpose of our design.

King David understood this discipline of the heart and the disaster of falling away from it. Listen to the discipline in his words (Psalm 108):

My heart is unwavering, God.

I WILL sing and make music -

yes, with my whole being!

Wake up, harp and lyre!

I WILL wake the dawn itself!

I WILL give thanks to you, LORD, among all the people;

I WILL make music to you among the nations.

because your faithful love is higher than heaven;

your faithfulness reaches the clouds.

Exalt yourself, God, higher than heaven!

Let your glory be over all the earth!

Just because you are designed for it doesn’t mean it’s easy every day. Just because you have done it in the past doesn’t mean it’s natural to do it today. It takes this same disciplined determination to speak to yourself and say “Get up! I will praise my LORD today!” And none of this is possible unless you are absolutely convinced of his love for you, and the benefits of it. Love is our motivation but we must discover the discipline for it every day, no matter the weather, the busyness and the distractions because we are convinced that he is so good all praise is due him.

4. The Gifts : The Gift Of Faith

 What is the gift of faith? Doesn’t everyone have faith? Yay, it can seem a bit confusing because of a couple of little words. All of us have been given a saving faith. This is the faith that believes that the actions of Jesus on the cross did for us exactly what he said they would, which is to pay for our rebellious acts, allowing for Father to forgive us. It was a redemptive act, redeeming us to the Father and it is faith in Jesus that gives us the potential to become the children of God.

The gift of faith is of a different nature. In simple terms, this powerful gift enables the possessor to rise up to heroic spiritual acts. It is a gift that gives people the power to believe without doubt every promise of Jesus, enabling them to face overwhelming odds or to do impossible things. Picture David with Goliath. From the start David had the gift of faith, trusting the Lord with the ability to face lions and bears, and eventually giants. 

The gift of faith enables a person to stand in a relationship of trust that can never be shaken. They know, with no doubt, that Father is faithful to every promise he has spoken and he is incapable of being unfaithful. Daniel and the lions’ den is another great example. Or how about Stephen who would not back down, knowing what he possessed was worth more than any life in this world. Or Paul who longed to testify about Jesus to the most powerful man in the known world. These are examples given to us to inspire us to stand against our own giants, trusting Father in it all.

The gift of faith is not for the purpose of making superstars in the Body. All gifts are for the building up, edifying of the Body. The people given this gift have it to be an inspiration to others, to encourage others to reach higher in their faith. Heidi Baker is an example in our modern day, a woman who has inspired thousands, if not millions, to take Jesus at his word. We have many other examples. We need to recognize this gift, honour it and be inspired to live as we have been designed to live, by faith.

Understanding The Place Of The Gifts Of The Spirit

When we talk about the gifts of the Spirit in the Church most people can’t relate. We have become accustomed to honouring talent and abilities over the gifts of the Spirit. Let’s be honest, most of us wouldn’t know the difference. We live in a society that honours education degrees, skills and talents, and it is this that we have adopted in the Church as well.

The gifts of the Spirit are not reserved for the beautiful, the gifted, the talented, the educated:

“All these things are produced by the one and same Spirit who gives what he wants to each person.”

Because we don’t understand this we end up experiencing spiritual poverty because we are shutting out the people who were given to us to enrich our life in Christ. Most of these people are the unexceptable ; the wrong gender, the wrong colour, the wrong background, the wrong sins, the wrong education level, the wrong carisma, the wrong relationship skills. We forget that we don’t choose but he chooses us and that he chooses each of us for a different purpose with a different gift. From the heights of the halls of Harvard or the lows of an elementary education, no one is left on the outside looking in because he has designed it in a way that we need each other to grow into what he has designed us to be.

When he called me I was a messed up kid with no leadership skill. I had no great love for people but I had fallen in love with Jesus. I would have been very content to have been left alone, with just one good friend, a pile of books and some writing paper. It was not my idea or desire to enter into full-time ministry. I did not have the skill set, no natural ability for public speaking nor an ability to lead people. It was actually a bit of a nightmare for me to realize he was calling me to be a pastor.

Leadership is not natural to me. He did not place me in the body according to my comfort level or ability. It was only over a time of exploration that I discovered I had been given the gift of teaching. But that’s not even my dominate gift. The thing I have been given that has become as natural to me as breathing is the gift of encourager, but that took decades for me to realize because people wanted to emphasize other parts of me and ignore what the Lord was doing.

The difference between ability and gifts is that there is power in the gifts. Anyone can be an encourager but the gift of encouragement has the supernatural power to lift people up and fill them with a desire to press on and reach for greater heights. Anyone can teach given enough knowledge, but the gift of teaching has the power to bring understanding and paint with the vivid colours of the Spirit things that could not even be imagined. What about the gift of administration? That’s a weird one to me that I definitely do not possess, but it is a gift with power that cannot be had through any study in this world.

I could disqualify myself by simply assessing it according to the level of my ability. How many have lost out on the experience of their gift simply because they thought they did not have the ability? It’s not ability we should be looking for but the mark of the Spirit that can be seen through a humble, willing and surrendered attitude. These things can be lost on a Church that lifts up talent, ability, charisma as well as education. Those may be great but they do not come with the redeeming power of Jesus Christ. The gifts set us apart from all other religions and groups in the world, because they are Christ working through us, not us working toward Christ.

If we want to see Father’s glory shining out from the Church we have to leave off our pursuit of professionalism and seek out the gifts once again. This is not to say that we do not press into excellence but let’s check the root and make sure it is excellence in the Spirit and not excellence according to the world.

3. The Gifts - A Word Of Knowledge

 Today we move on to the second gift, “a word of knowledge” that can be related to the first gift of “a word of wisdom”. Some people want to define this gift in an either or or situation. Some will say that it is related to receiving revelation on specific portions of scripture. Others will argue that it is a revelation of spiritual situations. I have experienced it as both.

I have sat under ministries that, as the word is being preached, suddenly the preacher is being fed fresh revelation as they are preaching. They are as surprised by it as anyone else. There have been many occasions where it has happened to me. It’s not that what I was preaching was wrong, it was just while I was sharing that word I felt a fresh “download” from the Spirit that took it to unexpected places. As always happens, in the week that followed, situations were given to test out this new revelation where it was proven to be solidly from the Spirit.

Equally I have experienced the revelation of spiritual situations. On a number of occasions I have stood before a minister who told me of private conversations I had had before giving me instructions from the Lord. The purpose for it was to get my attention so I knew it was the Lord speaking to me. In turn, I have stood before people seeking answers from the Lord when I have suddenly known of things that I had no knowledge of. Sometimes it was to help in providing an answer and other times it was to get their attention. More often than not, I was given things to say that meant nothing to me and everything to them.

This is the thing again, many believers may be given something for someone without actually possessing the gift. People with this gift operate in it all the time, like those in the office of the Prophet. But on occasion it will be given to a person for a moment, perhaps because no one with that gift was at hand.

Like everything in the Kingdom, this gift requires some training. Requiring training does not mean it is manufactured by humanity. It means that trainers, believers of maturity and experience are able to help those learning to walk in this gift, to understand and to avoid some of the common mistakes of the past. These trainers are filled by the Spirit and teach from that place of relationship. Thankfully we are getting better at understanding the need for the trainers in the Body.

A reminder, these are the spiritual gifts we need to encourage and build each other up to greater maturity in Christ. We need these gifts, that’s why they were given. It changes us from a “garden club” to the spiritual Body of Christ, where we are dependent on each other in our spiritual growth. Don’t be afraid of the gifts, pursue their understanding and walk in them.

We Have Been Conditioned Against Father's Love

 There is one very important thing about Father’s love that we have been conditioned in this world to not understand. It has to do with conditions and measurements. Everything in this world is limited by conditions and comes with some kind of measurement to define level or quantity. Because of that, there is nothing in this world that we can use to try to describe Father’s love.

Many of us struggle with the concept that Father’s love is not dependent on our behaviour. His love does not increase or decrease according to my thoughts or actions. His love is a constant. It is impossible for him to love me less or to love me more. He always desires the best for me. He always hopes that I will take what he gladly offers. His design is not to destroy me but to increase me. He has loved all of humanity since the beginning of time because he decided to, and he has never broken a promise. His word is the most solid thing in all of eternity. This removes the idea of measurement from his love.

The only thing we can measure with Father’s love is our revelation of it. Paul had written his hope that believers would be able to grasp how high, and deep and wide it is. This is very difficult for us to grasp because love in this world increases and decreases and often requires some kind of catalyst to increase or decrease.

Sometimes we compare Father’s love to a mother’s but this example falls very short. It is true that due to his love for us he will discipline us to increase us. Punishment takes away from us but discipline (correction) moves us toward a change that increases us. Mother’s don’t always get that right, nor do fathers. Sometimes we spend far more time punishing our children for our sake than we do correcting them for their strengthening and increase..

It is often the imperfections of a parent’s love that cause us to struggle with the understanding that there is no increase or decrease with father’s love and there are no conditions attached. Father loves the atheist as much as he loves me. Jesus went to the cross while we all were “yet sinners”. His death on the cross gave everyone the potential to become the children of God. The difference is that I accepted that free gift whereas others have rejected it. But neither of those decisions changed how much he loves each of us.

Love is not what is going to keep people out of hell. It is only the belief in and acceptance of Jesus’s loving act of redemption that will keep us from that fate. Father’s love also preserves our freedom to choose because love can only exist in the place of freedom of choice. The sad part about this is that the only limits on Father’s love is what we put on it.

Even with those who say they believe and accept Jesus’ loving act of redemption there exists a poverty of love because they are not willing to imagine that his love for them could be so great and constant. They limit him by their self-condemnation for their past and close themselves from receiving the greater part of the blessings he has prepared for them. Paul stated if Father did not withhold the Son from us, what lesser things would he deny us? This self-condemnation comes from people’s experience with punishment over correction, no matter if Jesus said differently.

It’s not always going to be sunshine and daffodils. We require a lot of discipline and building up. But even in those moments he wants us to live in the mindset of the “quiet waters” and “meadows” of where we walk with him in relationship. Paul tells us that discipline should never be a source of discouragement for us because it is actually proof of our “sonship”.

If you really want to walk in all that he has planned for you, trust that his love is unchanging, constant and unconditional. Such a mindset won’t change Father but it will certainly change you and allow you to see the Kingdom as it truly is, because trust is the mark of a loving child. Don’t allow the conditioning of this world to cause you to live a lesser blessing.