S. Sekou Abodunrin
And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;
Eph 5:18
When one is filled with the Spirit, he is filled with a clear understanding of the things that concern Jesus in glory. No one is able to participate in true worship that hasn’t first learned the secret of knowing what Jesus is doing for him today at the right hand of God. It is the knowledge of his service for you that enables you to participate in true service. It is not the other way round. This puts within you a well, a living well of living water. You can drink of this well anytime that you want to even when the pressure is mounting all around you. The Spirit will fill you with the knowledge that enables you to take with quiet faith his promised supply.
Please re-read what follows very slowly. Paul likened the effect of true worship to that which a man feels when he is under the influence of wine. When he said “wine” he really means that which intoxicates and empowers the flesh against the spirit. Wine dulls the senses and creates a false security temporarily. In order to prolong this false security there is need to baptise the senses in more wine. This affects how quickly the problem lays hold on our senses. You see we have been trained by experience and culture to drown our senses in a false reality through this process. You realise that wine is whatever produces this in you. Through much fellowship with wine, we are effectively hiding from facts. The amazing thing is that Paul likened being filled with the Spirit to this concept. The effect of the Spirit as wine is to dull your senses to the flesh and awaken its consciousness of the reality of God.
When you yield to the true worship rising out of your reborn spirit, it will ultimately transport your senses into a new awareness. In effect it will baptise your senses in God’s reality for you are drunk in God. Wine alters your chemical composition and so distorts your perception of reality. True worship on the other hand adjusts your senses to see clearly into God, break away from the false images imposed by the flesh on your mind and this opens you up to answers that will change the problems. In other words you are running towards facts so as to change them. See it this way – as you operate in true worship, you are reversing the effect of “wine”. It carries us past the barrier of irresponsible living. True worship dulls your sensitivity to the flesh, just like wine dulls your sensitivity to happenings around you. This comes about by lending your mouth and your imagination to the Spirit of God.
People who are drunk in wine often do not see clearly. Their vision is distorted. As we behold the glory of the Lord in the mirror we are transformed into the image that we see in the word. You are not really who you think that you are. There is more. You need to exchange vision. Somehow we must see past our current limits until what we see as the glory of the Lord is really seen for what it is - A glory he has shared with us and called us into[John 17:22]. This understanding aids your transformation. The trouble is that our experiences have imprinted on our minds what we think that we are and we have a lot of evidences for it. It will take the greatest fight in you, but you will have to see through the eyes of God’s love to go past this place of comparing spiritual things with natural. You must learn not to compare the spiritual standing of Christ with your natural weaknesses. Through worship you find it easier to compare his spiritual standing with your spiritual exaltation in Christ. It is God’s plan that as you look at Christ your senses contact the things that drive change.
Here is an exercise based on 1 john 4:17 to gain expertise in the practical application and meaning of the baptising the senses. Can you see Jesus as the very holiness and righteousness of the living God? Can you see him seated? Now, you are to worship and give thanks to God the father for Jesus the holy, glorious and righteous one. Now recall that “as he is so are we in this world” – So boldly confess that you are glorious, holy and righteous. Thank God for this slowly and repeatedly.
Worship is a door into the love of God.
It helps you receive more of that love that he has loved you with from all eternity. He cannot love you any more than he does now, but you can discover, bask and live in the reality of more of his unchanging love. Through worship you become more attuned to God’s atmosphere.
There is no end to knowing who he is, but there is a knowledge of him that is sufficient for this dimension of existence that we know as the earth. The love of God will carry you across the barriers of fear. Knowing him can bring your soul into a new set of realities, a place of being where all things are possible.
So you have a little team, and two people leave the team and you throw your hands up in despair? You should be genuinely mindful that the two have left, but very often we are in intense pain because we think that it is all about us - "they left me" - this is where we need restoration. It is not about you, but about him. Your mind gets adjusted by this and true love is born. Love for God, true love for his people – even “deserters”.
You and I are familiar with three creations - The animal, the angelic, and the human. This is the border of revelation that we can cope with, but you can be sure that in God there is a lot that we cannot wrap our brain around just yet. Generally, it seems that men cannot quite handle interaction with the angelic without seeming to loose common sense. Even John had to be instructed against angel worship in the book of revelation. What would happen if more were made obvious to us? Yet God will reveal more. You could postpone it till after death in the sweet by and by or you might as well step the game up one more level now.
We see a pattern in the way that God has created men and angels. The concept of choice is so important to him that he designed even his servants [angels] with power to choose. God has kept this pattern with you also; he has designed you with a right to choose. This is a right that is deeply costly to God for he knows that the choice can work either way, but in love he hasn’t made you a puppet. What pleasure would God get from operating you like a puppet and making you say what he wants to hear? He has billions of creatures in far flung space already serving that function. You have a right to choose confusion when all hell breaks loose around you and it is likely that you have exercised this fundamental right more than a few times or haven’t you?
Some of the angels chose to rebel against God. God’s own very creatures had turned around in rebellion. He also faced rebellion from Adam and humanity. Yet he has made you with a right and a capacity for making choices and he has not withdrawn it. He has eternity. He created it. He has angels around him in glory. Why does he not give up on man? The reason is that He wants sons and daughters who have made a choice to love him - he really wants you.
You also have a fundamental right to throw your hands up in abandonment to the love of the living God. What he wants is for you to want to worship, just because it has become an outflow of your new nature. This means so much to God.
Jesus showed us in the divine exchange called redemption, that the people of the earth are his treasure. God wants to commit enough of himself into your hands such that he can reach out through you to transform lives. This is true wealth.
The truth is that God would like to use you to win London. Or does he need to look farther? This is what it means when it says that God will commit to you the true riches. As love gets a handle on you, God can get the rare opportunity to place his treasures in your care. He knows that in the worst of times you can have the best of communion because you will throw you hands up in worship rather than speak offence to his treasured possession you will speak peace.
According to Peter, this whole structure shall melt with fervent heat. The gold, silver, and current measure of wealth will melt away. The precious human will survive this meltdown.
You matter to him.
Consider this, imagine that a certain rich man has a steward; he asks for a cup of tea, the steward makes it such that it is not hot enough. The rich man is angry; he throws the cup of tea in the steward’s face forgetting that he is addressing a fellow man. He is rich in a sense, but so poor in true riches. He doesn’t have the capacity to contain the true riches of God. Some need to be reminded that they were spared the flood in England before they can find enough reason to release worship. They are too drunk in the senses so you need to constantly shock their minds with gory tales of earthquakes, hurricanes or one disaster or the other before they express thanksgiving. Escaping these grave dangers is all the reason that they can think of. Guys, we need no reason other than that his love overflows in us. He has paid the price. We take our life in our hands and give him influence before men. Love is our motivation.
And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;
Eph 5:18
When one is filled with the Spirit, he is filled with a clear understanding of the things that concern Jesus in glory. No one is able to participate in true worship that hasn’t first learned the secret of knowing what Jesus is doing for him today at the right hand of God. It is the knowledge of his service for you that enables you to participate in true service. It is not the other way round. This puts within you a well, a living well of living water. You can drink of this well anytime that you want to even when the pressure is mounting all around you. The Spirit will fill you with the knowledge that enables you to take with quiet faith his promised supply.
Please re-read what follows very slowly. Paul likened the effect of true worship to that which a man feels when he is under the influence of wine. When he said “wine” he really means that which intoxicates and empowers the flesh against the spirit. Wine dulls the senses and creates a false security temporarily. In order to prolong this false security there is need to baptise the senses in more wine. This affects how quickly the problem lays hold on our senses. You see we have been trained by experience and culture to drown our senses in a false reality through this process. You realise that wine is whatever produces this in you. Through much fellowship with wine, we are effectively hiding from facts. The amazing thing is that Paul likened being filled with the Spirit to this concept. The effect of the Spirit as wine is to dull your senses to the flesh and awaken its consciousness of the reality of God.
When you yield to the true worship rising out of your reborn spirit, it will ultimately transport your senses into a new awareness. In effect it will baptise your senses in God’s reality for you are drunk in God. Wine alters your chemical composition and so distorts your perception of reality. True worship on the other hand adjusts your senses to see clearly into God, break away from the false images imposed by the flesh on your mind and this opens you up to answers that will change the problems. In other words you are running towards facts so as to change them. See it this way – as you operate in true worship, you are reversing the effect of “wine”. It carries us past the barrier of irresponsible living. True worship dulls your sensitivity to the flesh, just like wine dulls your sensitivity to happenings around you. This comes about by lending your mouth and your imagination to the Spirit of God.
People who are drunk in wine often do not see clearly. Their vision is distorted. As we behold the glory of the Lord in the mirror we are transformed into the image that we see in the word. You are not really who you think that you are. There is more. You need to exchange vision. Somehow we must see past our current limits until what we see as the glory of the Lord is really seen for what it is - A glory he has shared with us and called us into[John 17:22]. This understanding aids your transformation. The trouble is that our experiences have imprinted on our minds what we think that we are and we have a lot of evidences for it. It will take the greatest fight in you, but you will have to see through the eyes of God’s love to go past this place of comparing spiritual things with natural. You must learn not to compare the spiritual standing of Christ with your natural weaknesses. Through worship you find it easier to compare his spiritual standing with your spiritual exaltation in Christ. It is God’s plan that as you look at Christ your senses contact the things that drive change.
Here is an exercise based on 1 john 4:17 to gain expertise in the practical application and meaning of the baptising the senses. Can you see Jesus as the very holiness and righteousness of the living God? Can you see him seated? Now, you are to worship and give thanks to God the father for Jesus the holy, glorious and righteous one. Now recall that “as he is so are we in this world” – So boldly confess that you are glorious, holy and righteous. Thank God for this slowly and repeatedly.
Worship is a door into the love of God.
It helps you receive more of that love that he has loved you with from all eternity. He cannot love you any more than he does now, but you can discover, bask and live in the reality of more of his unchanging love. Through worship you become more attuned to God’s atmosphere.
There is no end to knowing who he is, but there is a knowledge of him that is sufficient for this dimension of existence that we know as the earth. The love of God will carry you across the barriers of fear. Knowing him can bring your soul into a new set of realities, a place of being where all things are possible.
So you have a little team, and two people leave the team and you throw your hands up in despair? You should be genuinely mindful that the two have left, but very often we are in intense pain because we think that it is all about us - "they left me" - this is where we need restoration. It is not about you, but about him. Your mind gets adjusted by this and true love is born. Love for God, true love for his people – even “deserters”.
You and I are familiar with three creations - The animal, the angelic, and the human. This is the border of revelation that we can cope with, but you can be sure that in God there is a lot that we cannot wrap our brain around just yet. Generally, it seems that men cannot quite handle interaction with the angelic without seeming to loose common sense. Even John had to be instructed against angel worship in the book of revelation. What would happen if more were made obvious to us? Yet God will reveal more. You could postpone it till after death in the sweet by and by or you might as well step the game up one more level now.
We see a pattern in the way that God has created men and angels. The concept of choice is so important to him that he designed even his servants [angels] with power to choose. God has kept this pattern with you also; he has designed you with a right to choose. This is a right that is deeply costly to God for he knows that the choice can work either way, but in love he hasn’t made you a puppet. What pleasure would God get from operating you like a puppet and making you say what he wants to hear? He has billions of creatures in far flung space already serving that function. You have a right to choose confusion when all hell breaks loose around you and it is likely that you have exercised this fundamental right more than a few times or haven’t you?
Some of the angels chose to rebel against God. God’s own very creatures had turned around in rebellion. He also faced rebellion from Adam and humanity. Yet he has made you with a right and a capacity for making choices and he has not withdrawn it. He has eternity. He created it. He has angels around him in glory. Why does he not give up on man? The reason is that He wants sons and daughters who have made a choice to love him - he really wants you.
You also have a fundamental right to throw your hands up in abandonment to the love of the living God. What he wants is for you to want to worship, just because it has become an outflow of your new nature. This means so much to God.
Jesus showed us in the divine exchange called redemption, that the people of the earth are his treasure. God wants to commit enough of himself into your hands such that he can reach out through you to transform lives. This is true wealth.
The truth is that God would like to use you to win London. Or does he need to look farther? This is what it means when it says that God will commit to you the true riches. As love gets a handle on you, God can get the rare opportunity to place his treasures in your care. He knows that in the worst of times you can have the best of communion because you will throw you hands up in worship rather than speak offence to his treasured possession you will speak peace.
According to Peter, this whole structure shall melt with fervent heat. The gold, silver, and current measure of wealth will melt away. The precious human will survive this meltdown.
You matter to him.
Consider this, imagine that a certain rich man has a steward; he asks for a cup of tea, the steward makes it such that it is not hot enough. The rich man is angry; he throws the cup of tea in the steward’s face forgetting that he is addressing a fellow man. He is rich in a sense, but so poor in true riches. He doesn’t have the capacity to contain the true riches of God. Some need to be reminded that they were spared the flood in England before they can find enough reason to release worship. They are too drunk in the senses so you need to constantly shock their minds with gory tales of earthquakes, hurricanes or one disaster or the other before they express thanksgiving. Escaping these grave dangers is all the reason that they can think of. Guys, we need no reason other than that his love overflows in us. He has paid the price. We take our life in our hands and give him influence before men. Love is our motivation.
.... to be continued
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