Ok, so a few weeks ago I was reading about the miracles where Jesus multiplies the bread. Right after these two astounding miracles, Jesus and his disciples cross the lake and run smack into the religious leaders who demand that Jesus give them a sign! Anyways, right after this encounter with the spirit of religion (unbelief in Christ’s power), Jesus went up into the hillside to pray, presumably to get alone with God to hear from heaven. He was totally dependent on the Father, as we know. However, his self-sufficient, (and ignorant) disciples jump into the boat thinking they can get along with what they have. They haven’t learned of their true condition, weakness, and need of God yet, so off they go to the next stop.
Basically, though they had just seen God’s power multiply the “bread from heaven” i.e., Jesus, and they had just eaten it and fed the hungry crowd with the bread from heaven….right after that, the disciples lapse into unbelief. Their unbelief came from the brief contact that they had just had with the spirit of religion. It was just a sprinkle of leaven from their very own religious leaders/system, but it got into their hearts almost undetected.
Immediately following their encounter with religious unbelief, Jesus warns them, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Imagine how the disciples felt watching their own religious leaders confronting Jesus and expressing doubt? Their questioning unbelief had a very subtle, yet powerful impact, as leaven does, on the pure bread of faith in Christ, so they were now looking to their own resources. Exactly what Satan wanted them to do. We forgot the bread! We are the ones who furnish the bread. We. I. My bread. Me. Us. Not Christ who gives the supernature, miracle, only God-can-do-this-bread from heaven that we feed on daily, but us. WE forgot OUR bread. It's up to us.
Every one of us has been exposed to religious leaven. The church is full of a mixture of faith in Christ, and also looking to self to bring forth the kingdom. It is rooted in unbelief, as if the circumcision of the cross that is done without human hands is insufficient or lacking in power. This is exactly why we often fail to see the transformation and the miraculous. Even churches preaching faith are so infected with this leaven that we often have crop failure. Even those of us who assent to the full work of the cross have it in us and don’t even know it (me too).
But it’s a new day. God is sending Moses to "Pharoh" saying, "Let my people go!" Now is the time! God is delivering his people of this religious leaven. It’s hidden. It isn’t detected consciously in that we have an explicit belief, but it is implicit-even unconscious. It can be conscious too, but generally it is unseen, subtle, and deadly. The Holy Spirit is exposing it if we be humble and recognize that it does exist in each of us, and God is the only one who can reveal it and cleanse us by the blood of Christ.
We cannot go into the promised land, i.e. Christ in us the hope of glory/ transformed into the image of Christ, unless we eat the bread that came down from heaven, unless we let go of our trying, die to all self-efforts, give up all man- made religious ideas that aren’t drawing life from Christ, and truly have a revelation of Christ. Because of the coming darkness and storm, only those who consume Christ will be able to overcome.
Had the Lord not taught me to live by faith in Christ, I would be dead now, or locked up, or strung out. I am not exaggerating at all. I was beyond broken and done and washed up, so He had to teach me how to overcome everything by believing what the word says, I am crucified with Christ and no longer a slave to sin. He taught me over many months and years of poring over the word with prayers and tears looking for a way out of the sin that had bound me to darkness.
The reality that God does it in us, by faith, through the Spirit, saved me. It’s His life, not mine. It’s His power, not mine. In fact, the weaker I am, the more His power is manifest. As Smith Wigglesworth says, “God can only use your helplessness.” Pastor Kent once preached that branches are joined to the vine “wound to wound” when a branch is grafted into a new vine: my wounds bound to His wounds where the life of the Vine flows into my very being. The best thing that we can do is quit. Stop trying to do what only He can do. God says, "I AM the Lord who redeems you." It's His GIFT.
But like E.W. Kenyon said, this last move of God is a Hebrews 4 revival where we will labor to enter the finished work of Christ, by faith, through the power of the Holy Spirit. May we not be as those that did not mix the word with faith and did not enter in!
The Lord is burning out the dross and making new wine skins that can hold the wine of the Spirit that will only be poured out in assemblies that are eating the bread from heaven, Jesus Christ, who died and rose again and lives in us, unmixed and undiluted with the unbelief and additives of man’s religion. He is driving it out. I feel His divine jealousy to see His image come forth in us, the reward of His suffering (Isaiah 53).
This is HIS church, and He will have it. He will have a mature church in this hour filled with the very Spirit of God…Ephesians 4 and Isaiah 4!
If we will believe it, like Mary who believed the promise of God, “that which is utterly divine” will be birthed from our spiritual wombs.
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