A Journey with God

By Mlungisi Elvis Ndlovu

This book is a journey of how to grow spiritual. Inside the book you will find the treasures of heaven, the wisdom and the understanding that will help to mirror your relationship with Christ and start to realise that you are helpless without Christ in your life. This is a book of God's restoration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Mar 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456862428

Book preview

SINNING

No-one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No-one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him—1 John 3:6

It is sin that makes God’s holiness so amazing. It is sin that makes God’s holiness so glorious, because He has said: Be holy, for I am holy (Leviticus 11:45): I am the Lord that hallow you (Leviticus 22:32).

It is sin that called forth the wonderful love of God in not sparing His Son. It was sin that nailed Jesus to the cross and revealed the depth and the power of the love with which He loved. Through all eternity in the glory of heaven, it is our being redeemed sinners that will give music to our praise.

Never forget for a moment that it is sin that has led to the great transaction between you and Jesus Christ. Each day in your fellowship with God, His one aim is to deliver and keep you fully from its power, and to lift you into His likeness and His infinite love.

It is the thought of sin that will keep you low at His feet and will give the deep undertone to all your adoration. It is the thought of sin, ever seeking to tempt you, that will give fervency to your prayer and urgency to the faith that hides itself in Christ. It is the thought of sin that makes Christ so unspeakably precious that keeps you every moment dependent on His grace, and that gives you the right to be more than a conqueror through him that loved us (Romans 8:37). It is the thought of sin that calls you to thank God with "a broken and a contrite heart . . . [that] God . . . will not despise" (Psalm 51:17), and that works in you a contrite and humble spirit in which He delights to dwell.

And you know that he was manifested to away our sins; and in him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not (1 John 3:5-6). In the text, John taught how we can be kept from sinning. Though there is sin in our nature, the abiding in Christ, in whom there is no sin, does indeed free us from the power of sin and enable us to live daily so as to please God. The Scriptures record that Christ had said of the Father, I do always those things that please him (John 8:29). And so John wrote later in his epistle, Beloved, if our hearts condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight (1 John 3:21-22).

It is in the inner chamber, in secret with the Father, that sin can be conquered, the holiness of Christ can be imparted, and the Spirit of holiness can take possession of our lives. It is in the inner chamber that we learn to know and experience fully the divine power of these precious words of promise: The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleaneth us from all sin (1 John 1:7). Never forget for a moment, as you enter the secret chamber that your whole relationship to God depends on what you think of sin and of yourself as a redeemed sinner.

Romans 6 is one of the blessed portions of the New Testament of our Lord Jesus, teaching us that our old man (v6)—the old nature that is in us—was actually crucified with Him, so that we no longer need to be in bondage to sin. But remember, only as the Holy Spirit makes Christ’s death a reality of that power of a divine life—that we are indeed dead to sin. It only requires the continual living in Christ Jesus.

How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? (Romans 6:2). You are indeed dead to sin in Christ Jesus. As you grow in the consciousness of your union with the crucified Christ, you will experience that the power of His life in you has made you free from the power of sin.

"If I depart, I will send him [the Comforter] unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin" (John 16:7-8). The close connection between the two statements in these words of our Lord is not always noticed. Before the Holy Spirit was to reprove or convince the world of sin, He was first to come into the disciples. He was to dwell within them, and then, through them, He was to do His work of convicting the world of sin. He shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness (John 15:26-27).

The disciples were to realize that the great work of the Holy Spirit, striving with man, convincing the world of sin, could be done only as He had a dwelling place in them. They were to receive the power from on high with the one purpose of being the instruments through whom the Holy Spirit could reach the world.

Begin with some single sin and give your conscience time, in silent submission and humiliation, to reprove you. Say to your Father that in this one thing you are, by His grace, going to obey. Accept anew Christ’s wonderful offer to take possession of your heart, to dwell in you as Lord and Keeper. And vow that by God’s grace you will exercise yourself to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men

When you have begun this practice with one sin, proceed with others, step by step. As you are faithful in keeping your conscience pure, the light will shine more brightly from heaven into your heart, discovering sin you had not noticed before. God’s light will bring out distinctly the law written by the Spirit you had not been able to read. Be willing to be taught. Be trustfully sure that the Spirit will teach. Every honest effort to keep your conscience clean in God’s light will be met with the aid of the Spirit. Only yield yourself entirely to God’s will and to the power of His Holy Spirit.

Dear child of God, you are called to a life in which faith—great faith, strong, continuous, and unbroken—in the almighty power of God is your one hope. As you daily take time and yield yourself to the God of peace, who perfects you in every good work (Hebrews 13:21) to do His will, you will experience that God indeed works in those who wait for Him. (See Lamentations 3:25)

__________________________________________________

THE WORLD

My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one—John 17:15

The world is the disposition or power under which man has fallen through sin. And the god of this world, in order to deceive man, conceals himself under the form of what God has created. The world with its pleasures, surround the Christian each day with temptations.

John taught us clearly what he meant by "the world." He wrote, For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the father, but is of the world (1 John 2:16). This was the case with Eve in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3:6, we find the three characteristics that John mentioned: first, the lust of the flesh: The woman saw that the tree was good for food; second, the lust of the eyes: It was pleasant to the eyes; and third, the pride of life: A tree to be desired to make one wise. The world still comes to us, offering desirable food and much to please the fleshy appetites. It offers much that the eye desires, including riches, beauty and luxury. And it offers the pride of life, which is shown when a man imagines he knows and understands everything, and prides himself on it.

The world rules too much in the lives of Christians, Christians rarely live the heavenly life to which they are called in Christ Jesus. The love of the world—lust of the flesh [pleasure in eating, drinking, ease and comfort], lust of the eyes [delight in all that the world of beauty and possession], and the pride of life [the self exalting in what the wisdom and power of man has accomplished].

How very different is the relationship of Christians to the world today. They acknowledge that they must not commit the sins that the world allows. But still they are good friends with the world, and they feel free to enjoy as much of it as they can, if they only stay away from open sin. They do not know that the most dangerous source of sin is the love of the world with its lusts and pleasures.

Christ spoke strongly about the world hating Him. His kingdom and the kingdom of this world were in deadly hostility. John summed it up when he said, And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness (1 John 5:19). Christ left us with a far reaching promise: Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world (John 16:33). As the child of God abides in Christ and seeks to live life in the power of the Holy Spirit, he may confidently depend on the power given him to overcome the world. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:5). This is the secret of daily, hourly victory over the world and all its secret, subtle temptations: I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20). But it needs a heart and life entirely possessed by the faith of Jesus Christ to maintain the victor’s attitude at all times. My fellow believer take time to ask whether you believe with your whole heart in the victory that faith gives over the world. Put your trust in the mighty power of God, in the abiding presence of Jesus, as the only pledge of certain, continual victory. "Believest thou this . . . Yea, Lord: I believe" (John 11:26-27).

If Jesus was not of the world, why was He in the world? The answer is that the Father had sent Him into the world. In this two expressions, in the world, and not of the world, we find the whole secret of His work as Savior, of His glory as the God-man. The follower of Jesus must combine both. If he does not clearly show that he is not of the world, how will he convince the world of sin, prove to her that there is a higher life or teach her to desire what she does not possess? Separation from the spirit of the world must characterize him. And still, he must live as one who is in the world placed here by God, among those who are of the world, to win their hearts and to communicate to them of the Spirit that is in him. He will not succeed by yielding, complying and softening the reality of Christianity. No, he will succeed only by walking in the footsteps of Him, who alone can teach how to be, in the world and yet not of it. Only by a life of serving and suffering love, and in which, full of the