THE PERFECTED MAN

"The Lord will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever; Do not forsake the works of your hands." Psalm 138:8

A close brother in the Lord told me one night that he wanted to show me something and went about setting up a funny looking telescope in his back yard. He focused on a constellation and pointed out the tree stars of Orion's belt and then told me to look at them through the telescope.

I was struck with awe as I looked at the sight that filled my vision. Not only did I see the three stars observable with my natural vision but I also saw a multitude of stars that were unobservable by natural means. The impression of the vastness of God's creation still overwelms me.

It's perfect and it's all God's. And it's so vast!

And here is planet Earth, a mere tiny spot in all creation, that God chose to make inhabitable for mankind! What's more, here is man on planet Earth whom our Creator has chosen to reveal Himself to and to fellowship with!

It's an amazing truth to be wrestled with....

God created a perfect creation and He is perfecting those whom he has created!

No wonder we find David saying....

"I will cry out to God Most High, To God who performs all things for me." Psalm 57:2

The Most High God, our Creator, Savior and Sustainer, is performing His will in our lives and perfecting us into the people of God that He desires for us to be. This is more than wonderful. This is a truth that should inspire such a humility within us that every ounce of human pride disolves and dissipates.

This is a truth that should draw us into the place where we, like David, cry out to our Creator with the voices of....

Praise - adoring the Lord with our whole heart.

Supplication - bringing our needs to the only Source of provision.

and

Intercession - falling into and going along with the will of God in our own lives and in the lives of others where we stand in agreement to tear down the spiritual strongholds which hold men in bondage and hold back the manifestation of the things of God.

I'm so glad that I finally came to the reality that God isn't looking for someone perfect. None of us would ever measure up. That's why He provided us with Someone (Jesus) who was Perfect. God is looking for people to perfect. This is a liberating truth. Our lives as believers are lived out in the arena where the process of perfection is continually taking place as the Holy Spirit grooms us and dresses us. And it's never over.

Even the Apostle Paul, one of the most mature Christians to have ever walked this planet, realized this. And what did he conclude?

"Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13-14

The perfecting process of God in our individual lives and in the corporate life of the gathered Body of Christ is an ongoing process of maturity for all who will yield to His will. Some, it seems, will never get it. They are too inclined to hold onto their own will personally or denominationally.

But, for those who yield, we see the perfecting process of God actively working.

The Apostle Paul says,

"being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:6

This tells us that God finishes what He starts.

There is also a truth here that needs to be understood. The known will of God, as revealed in the total context of Holy Scripture, shows us that within the scope of God's will there are those who do the will of God and those who refuse the will of God. Both catagories present consequences - the one for good and the other for bad. It's important for us to realize that even those who refuse God's will and accumulate unto themselves the judgement of God are fulfilling the will of God where His justice is concerned. This process will continue to take place until the Lord returns.

As for me, I want to be sure that I am in the catagory where I am accumulating the blessings of God and to continue to yield myself to His will for my life as He leads me daily in what I am to do and as He grooms me with His Holy Spirit to perfect me into the mature believer that He has in mind for me to be.

Thank God for believers today who are not content with the "ordinary" and powerless brand of Christianity which characterizes so much of the Body of Christ today. Thank God for the awakening that is taking place in the Body which is compelling men and women to walk in the realm of maturity where faith for the miraculous is not uncommon.

The perfecting process of God in our lives is designed to move us out of powerless and ritualistic religious practice and into a relationship with God that manifests itself in spiritual power and freedom.

Here, again, the Apostle Paul clues us in to God's will where spiritual power and freedom are concerned.

"And He gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, til we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head - Christ." Ephesians 4:11-15

This is a tremendous passage of Holy Scripture! We could really embark on an adventure of exploration that would take us to some wonderul realizations concerning traditional ministry.

We could look at the biblical leadership structure of the church and their responsibilities.

We could look at the biblical place of the Body of Christ in ministry.

And there are a number of other topics that raise their heads here that are worth our while looking at.

But let's look at the product of the perfecting process of God in our lives.

Let's look at the Perfected Man.

"To a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" should be the goal of every believer in Jesus Christ!

There is no end of the excuses that believers give for not doing the things that Jesus did - the things that His disciples were shown and told to do - the things that their disciples were shown and told to do - and things which isolated disciples of Jesus Christ throughout the church age did!

But the witness of Holy Scripture still stands!

Jesus said....

"If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples." John 15:7-8

"I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20

And the Apostle John, one of Jesus' disciples said....

"Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him." 1 John 5:14-15

This brings us to a very important question.

Do we believe the Word of God?

If we believe it to be true then we need to simply do what it says!

If we choose to argue with it where directives are as plainly stated as the references quoted here then why believe in the miraculous birth, resurrection and ascension of Jesus at all?

Jesus' earthly ministry is characterized by four things....

He healed the sick. He raised the dead. He cast our demons. And He preached the Kingdom of God.

The ministry of his disciples , the twelve and the seventy, is characterized by four things....

They healed the sick. They raised the dead. They cast our demons. And they preached the Kingdom of God.

The witness of the early church, until it became institutionalized in the third century following Constantine's legalization of Christianity, follows the example of Jesus and His disciples.

They healed the sick. They raised the dead. They cast out demons. And they preached the Kingdom of God.

So what are we doing? If we are not doing what they did then it certainly seems that we are not doing what we are susposed to do and are majoring in minors that are spiritually impotent and powerless.

Remember what David said in Psalm 138:8....

"The Lord will perfect that which concerns me...."

And also be aware of the hinderer and the hinderances that he will use to keep you from experiencing the perfecting process of God in your life.

The Apostle Peter said....

"Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you." 1 Peter 5:6-10

Realize this....

Satan has an agenda and his agenda is to keep believers from growing up into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ!

The first three hundred years of the Church age he used serious persecution as his choice weapon against believers. But the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was so valuable and greatly to be desired that people chose to follow Jesus Christ even in the face of physical persecution and death. Even today believers in some countries suffer physical persecution that we can't even begin to understand but Jesus is so real to them that they choose to follow Him in spite of anything sent against them by brutal governments.

After Constantine's edict the potent and powerful Church traded it's power for more institutionalized forms. Rather than equipping the saints for the work of ministry the saints became the means by which a hierarchy of men, ordained by men, found their resources for existance. For centuries anyone who attempted to follow Jesus after the true biblical pattern found himself or herself persecuted by the accepted religious establisment. Both the Catholic and the Protestant Church are guilty of persecuting and killing believers who refused to accept their governance.

But all the while God has been faithful to keep a remnant alive in whose hearts burned the desire to follow after the pattern set by Jesus and followed by his disciples and those who followed after them - the desire to grow into the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ.

Satan has an agenda and he works it well. He will use any tool that he can to accomplish it. We need to grow up and quit being ignorant of his devices!

Over the years the Church, especially the evangelical Church, has been quite efficient in preaching against the "big" sins that Satan uses to tempt people with but in recent years it has become unpopular to preach boldly against such things as adultery, fornication, homosexuality and such like. But, honestly, there are much more deceptive and dangerous sins that need equal pulpit time like hatred, contentions, jealousies, selfish ambition, dissensions and heresies - things which, according to Galations 5:19-21, will result in disqualification for access to Heaven.

But the need for instruction goes beyond such as these.

1 Peter 5:7 tells us that we are to live humbly before God....

"casting all our care upon Him."

Care is an interesting word. In the original language of the New Testament the word "care" is "merimna" and comes from "meiro" which means "to divide" and "noos" which means "mind".

Honestly, if we are going to walk as Jesus walked, and as the other mentioned examples walked, we've got to get to the place in our lives where this world no longer holds our interest and our only interest is to walk in the same fullness of the glory of God that we read about in the lives of the people that God used to build the Church in it's infancy and in the lives of a few men and women during the years of the Church who dared to depart from the religiously accepted norm to follow the Lord's leading on their lives.

This is radical teaching! But it needs to be said that the lives of most believers in Jesus today are so totally consumed by following after the things of the world that there is little left of them after the work day to spend time praying and reading personally the Word of God, there is little time after the work week to invest personally in doing the work of ministry and often the more glamorous ministries of the stage ministers on the television replace a submissive relationship of accountability in a local congregation. This is the state of Christianity in an age when the Church should be walking in the shining glory of Jesus like the first century believers did!

It's an awesome truth. The Creator of the universe desires to do a perfect work in our lives that brings us to completion in Him and equips us to do the things that He designed us for and desires us to do. His will is for us to become perfected men and women useful for His purposes - for the saints to do the work of ministry.

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