Who are you: Weed or Wheat?

     In every gathering of God’s people there are weeds, otherwise referred to as tares (Matt. 13: 24-30) in the Scripture. It makes all the difference for now and eternity which one you are. The great challenge is to liberate people from the category of weeds to the category of wheat.
    The Church of Jesus Christ is made up of Inside-Outsiders (weeds) and Inside-Insiders (those with real knowledge of personal salvation; wheat). The first is made up of people, who, by their nature are a danger to the corporate functioning and operation of the Church. They are weeds. Only two people have the prerogative of determining which group you are in – Jesus Christ and you.
     The Inside-Outsider and Inside-Insider often look alike, sound similar and both believe in Jesus Christ. Their relationship to Him as Lord, however, couldn’t be more dissimilar. What is the difference? One is an imitator and the other is in relationship with Christ by faith (Act 8:9-22). Inside-Outsiders have “neither part nor portion in Christ” (Acts 8:21).
     The Inside-Outsider is in the church but outside a deep, intimate relationship with Christ. He believes that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world but has never come to know Him as the Savior of his own soul and Lord of his life. There never has been a time of complete commitment of all he or she has and is-a commitment that allows one to experience the power of the Christian life in daily, specific surrender of the needs, challenges, problems and opportunities of life. The Inside-Outsider is inside the church, but outside of an intimate, impelling, indwelling experience of Christ as Lord.
     One of the most gratifying and puzzling phenomena of our time is the great number of church attendants who are discovering the joy and freedom of committing their lives to Christ. They are discovering the excitement of trusting Christ with their frustrations and fears. Recently a Church member realized the power of Christ and shared the delight of his experience with fellow members at the meeting. It was very disturbing to some when he said “I have been in the Assembly for many years. Last week I found out what it’s all about to be Christian. I’ve always believed that Christ was the Savior, but for the first time I know He’s my Savior.” He was saying that it was alarming to think of all the joy he’d missed by being an Inside-Outsider among God’s people. “Now I know Christ as the Lord of all my relationships and responsibilities.”
     The Church faces no more crucial issues today than how to make wheat out of the weeds in our midst. It’s never easy. This is because weeds think they have discovered all that is to be discovered in the Christian life, as they strive to achieve it. They are misfits because they want to do God’s work in their own strength. It won’t work.
     On the other hand, the wheat is the person who has truly embraced Christ and is in relationship with Him as Lord. Christ has taken charge as Lord. He no longer imitates the Christian life but allows Christ to be manifest in the flesh through his daily activities.
     Who are you: Weed or Wheat?

Faith Defines the Christian Walk

Life in general is properly described as a journey and not a destination. In this perspective the sum total of what we are engaged in is a walk on this journey. Along this life’s journey many have distracted themselves into side shows. Some are counting the miles they have covered so far and are settling on the wayside. To a good proportion of people the activities of fellow pilgrims have become their preoccupation, and so they turn themselves into walk-watchers.

To the believer in Christ there are rules as to how we walk on this journey. These rules are kept in proper perspective if we are focused on the essence of our walk, and that essence is our faith. It defines our walk.

For example, Hebrews eleven reminds us all of effectiveness, courage and loyalty to God in their walk. Their deeds were not based on wisdom, power, or enthusiasm. Collectively they tell us not to marvel at the great deeds of their lives. We are told, “God made bare His holy arm and has done this by us in His name through faith” (Acts 3:12-16). It is God who has done all these wonderful works.

We make a profound mistake in attributing to these men extraordinary qualities of courage, or strength of body or soul. To do so is to miss the whole point of the reiterated teaching of Scripture. They were not different from ordinary men and women except in their faith.

One characteristic common to all the heroes of faith of the Hebrew story is their faith in God. This lifted them above ordinary men and women and secured for them a niche in the temple of Scripture . This indeed is the capacity of the human heart for God, a marvelous faculty of faith. Four times over this is cited as the secret of all that Moses did for his people.

Our Lord Jesus repeatedly taught and emphasized the need for faith in a believer’s walk. In His judgment having wisdom, being strong and enthusiastic are as the small dust of the balance and must not be taken into serious consideration compared to having faith.

His incessant demand is for faith to b e present in persons. He would say “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you might say unto this sycamore tree, ‘Be thou plucked up by the root, and be planted by the sea; and it should obey you’” (Luke 17::6). To a father he once said, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth” (Luke 9:23, 24).

The believer, therefore, is the God-filled, the God-moved, the God-possessed human person, and the work which he or she effects in the world is not his or hers, but God through him or her. It is certain that as the present age draws to a close, God has great schemes on hand which must shortly be realized. According to His invariable method, He will have to perform them through the instrumentality and faith of human persons.

Walking by faith implies never to evaluate circumstances or things in the light of our strength, education, abilities or resources. Keep in mind that Jehovah, our Jehoshua, our resource, is all we need to face anything in life.

Joseph: Prisoner to the Will of the Spirit

One of the most notable of God’s prisoners in the Old Testament is Joseph, one of the twelve sons of Jacob. In his childhood he was beloved of his father and had freedom to move about as he chose. He had seen a vision of the Throne, of rulership and authority, and he believed God was going to bring this to him. Nevertheless, this vision was not shared by his brothers, and because of this vision he was brought into a very real confinement by his brothers, into a pit with no way to look but up.

He was then sold into slavery, and he was brought to Potiphar’s house in chains of bondage. At Potiphar’s house Joseph was blessed in such a way that Potiphar gave him a measure of freedom and authority, and he was the means of feeding and caring for the others who were also in bondage. He may have become a little satisfied with his measure of authority and his measure of freedom and the good work that he was doing. Perhaps he travailed before God to complete and fulfill the original vision he had seen. At any rate God began the work of bringing him to the throne.

How? By setting him free? Oh no! But by bringing him into a terrible disgrace and the losing of his reputation and the “measure” of his freedom and authority. God brought Joseph into a greater confinement than he had ever known, and for years He kept him confined in a prison cell. This lasted until Joseph began crying for deliverance, and he tried to enlist the aid of everyone who could get a word with the king. He cries, “Get me out of this place.”

There was real travail of his soul. Psalm 105:19 tells us that “The word of the Lord tried him.” Even in the darkest hour when it looked as though he was a complete failure and his life was nothing, Joseph never lost the vision of what God had shown him. He held on to the word of the Lord to him. When he was completely submitted to the dealing of God, in the fullness of time God brought forth His chosen vessel to feed the nation in the time of need. God was not late, neither could He be forced or pressured into moving too soon. He was right on time. He had Joseph, His chosen one, ready for the hour.

Just because God has given you a vision does not mean you should exert all your strength to take it at will. You must be patient before God and allow Him to prepare you for it. It is not an easy road. Before the world can be brought into submission to God, He first will perfect and mature the tool He will work with. You can never be in this company who rule with Christ on His Throne until you have become His prisoner and been brought into absolute submission and obedience to His perfect will.

To Christ every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, but you will never be used to bring others into submission as long as there is the least bit of the rebellious nature within you. You must be disciplined to the will of the Spirit. Remember that having a burden does not necessitate timing. Surrender and submit under the mighty hand of God.

Peter: Prisoner to the Will of the Spirit

In the last chapter of John, just before His ascension, Jesus spoke these words to Peter: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest, but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee wither thou wouldest not” (John 21:18).

In our youth and immaturity (spiritually) the Lord permits many things in us that He later strips from us as we become more mature in the Spirit. One of these is the freedom of our own choices. When we were young, like Peter, we girded ourselves with our armor and went forth to battle, walking wherever we desired. Wherever we saw an opportunity to do a good work for God, we got involved and engaged. There was a freedom granted to us, and God graciously blessed and anointed our efforts as we prayed and sought His help.

If we pastored, He blessed and gave increase. If we decided to go on the evangelistic field, He blessed and anointed and gave us souls. If we decided to teach, He blessed and gave us revelation of His Word. Though we sought for His guidance and tried to be led of the Spirit, there was not that absolute binding to the perfect will of God and the voice of the Spirit. This was in our strength, our youth and immaturity.

With growth and maturity there came a discipline of the Spirit bringing us into submission to His perfect will. Sometimes, because of the strength of our wills or stubbornness and hardness of our own spirits, there comes affliction and tribulation to weaken our own flesh in order to make us submit to His purpose in us. Paul prayed three times for deliverance from a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, but God would not deliver him. In effect He told Paul that He was doing this to keep him weak. For the Lord said, “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Peter found that, as he grew older in the Lord, there was to be no more of the walking “where thou wouldst.” Rather, there was to be a binding of his own strength, and his girding would come from another, and he would be carried to destinations determined by someone else. This is a mark of maturity. There is a work of the Spirit now going on to bring us to a place of absolute imprisonment to the direct guidance and will of the Spirit. What a glorious confinement!

Just to know that I am bound up in His divine purposes, regardless of what He chooses to do with me and to me, is a privilege worth accepting. It is a difficult and tortuous path at times, until we recognize who our Jailer really is. We fret and worry when we think we are bound by our circumstances, or by our associates, or by the devil. Those who are called into the high calling of God need to come to the realization Who controls their destiny, so that they can come into a REST, and submit to His workings and dealings in their lives. Like Paul and Peter and those other heroes of faith, we are prisoners of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Common Human Temptation

All our temptations are but diminutive demonstrations of our desire to hug center stage. They are beguiling enticements to insure power, to play God, king of the mountain, lord of our own lives.
Try that on for size. Think of the temptations you have had in just the past years. Didn’t they involve side-stepping some spiritual or moral law of God? Start with the basics. Begin with the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods.” All the rest of the commandments focus on the danger of breaking that fundamental spiritual law. We can make a false god out of controlling our use of time, people, the family, truth, sex or things.
The producer and director of that production is Satan. He is a fallen angel who tried to hug center stage. Having lost his place in glory, he is busy recruiting and casting power-hungry people in roles that usurp the spotlight in their life story. He delights in getting us to seek the glory rather than glorify Christ. But center stage is where we get the worst case of feeling at loose ends because we cannot cope with the pressure. It’s inevitable; we were never meant to be there in the first place.
Temptation to get and keep control are distracting loose ends. They keep pulling us away from our central purpose of glorifying God and doing what we know He has called us to do. And now the central question: Is Christ also Lord of these loose ends of temptation? Always remember when you are being tempted that you are seeking to hug the center stage. Stop! You’re not the star. Christ is.