To See As I Have Seen

By Paul Ravenhill
Psalms 63:1,2
We live in a day of mediocrity where we are satisfied just to reach our emotional high in a church meeting. A total commitment to the things of God is exchanged for a mere "assent" to truth. We live in a day when the church is seeking self fulfillment. We try to heal everybody's hurts, get people to feel good, give everyone a good self-image. God, help us! God, pity us!

You know, instead of what we think about ourselves, the Bible talks about a vision of God! The Bible talks about a world out beyond! The Bible talks about people put in harmony with God. When our desire for God does not include doing the will of God and carrying through on it, a lack of spiritual reality and passion result. No wonder frustration is the state of the church today. If we get to talk one on one with almost anybody, an element of discontentment is always there.

I remember when I first went to the mission field, a man whom the Lord had really used down through the years said to me, "You know, Paul, you have to come to the place where you can say, 'This is not just the God of the Bible. This is not just the God of church history. This is my God. This is the God who I know is with me and on whom I can rely to back that which I do.'"

Maybe one thing that's lacking today is the knowledge that God has total authority. I cannot address the Lord "My God" and then go and do my will. It's got to be "My God, Thy kingdom come." We need to have the
same kind of spiritual passion that David has when he cries out in Psalms 63:1,2:

O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.
God first. Can you see the depths of his cry and the strength of his longing? Can you see his determination to seek God? Here is the responsibility of every Christianto translate our spiritual vision to an earthly reality. Put another way: to see in our everyday life the power and glory of God that we have read about in the scripture.

David starts out saying, "O God, thou art my God." Oh God, he is saying, all that thou art, thou art to me. I will not look at any other direction. Note that David is not saying that in the temple or on the throne. He is in the wilderness of Judah, according to the note at the beginning of that psalm. Wherever David is, God is his God.

"Early will I seek thee," he continues. The word "early" has two meanings. It's first time-wise. David seeks God the first thing in the morning. But it also applies to the priorities of life. To David, God comes before anything else!

To live a meaningful Christian life, we all have got to come to that. Is God my reality, or is this world my reality? When God is not the top and eternal priority, people in the mission field get wiped out; pastors get burnt out; and churchgoers wither and die in times of trial and temptation.

Personal relationship. David goes on to say, "My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary."

Many people have learned about God from reading the Bible much as David has seen Him in the sanctuary. But David longs to know God in a much deeper way. He thirsts for a personal experience with God.

Someone said, "By the time we get to the end of life, each of us will have our own Bible." What he meant is that from the experiences we've received during our pilgrimage, there will be verses in the scripture that become particularly comforting to us; there will be passages that are especially meaningful to us. These are things that God gives us personally.

We read in the Bible, for example, the words that Jesus spoke to the disciples and we say, "Isn't that beautiful." But if you have ever been in a place where you really needed to hear God say to you, "I'll never leave you and never forsake you," and you experienced comfort from that promise, that's something you go back to day after day.

He'll never leave me! It doesn't matter where I am. It doesn't matter if I've got money or don't have money, if I have health or don't have health. It doesn't matter if the world is falling down. He has promised He'll never leave me. It grows until finally it takes dominion over all of life. And so, I walk with Him! And this is what it's all about. I walk with Him. I walk with my God.

Personal experience. Note that David doesn't say "My soul thirsteth for thee" and end there. He also says, "My flesh longeth for thee." It's something that goes beyond my mind and my soul. My flesh longeth. O Lord, I long to experienceeven as I've read about in the Bible and as I've heard through the mouths of your servantsthe reality of Your power and Your glory. Not just my soul thirsteth, but my flesh longeth. This earthly part of me wants to see You, the eternal God, doing Your mighty works. It's something that I can't contain. It's there, and I can't get away from it.

Spiritual deserts. David wants to see God's power and glory "in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is". He wants to see them there in the desert just as he has seen them in the sanctuary. This world, from pole to pole, is a desert place. Even the so called Christian countries are desert places nowadays. Go over to Europe where the Reformation first started. Go to Germany, go to England or even come over to this country and you'll see what I mean.

Probably one of the greatest curses on the church is that we've relegated all Christian experience to a building. We've kept the form, we've kept the tradition. These are the last things to diethe form, the tradition. Maybe it's kind of like a fungus. It grows on the surface even as there is decay within. It grows on death. Result: we've got all the form, all the tradition, but there's not very much essence. There's not very much life. There's not very much vision.

Pervasive darkness. As a result, there are mission fields today that are worse than they were a generation ago. They're worse than they were two thousand years ago when Jesus came. Why? Because just as God works from life to life, faith to faith, glory to glory, so the enemy works. And every sin and every sickness and every pain and every sorrow and every twisted thing and every degenerate thing is added to the weight of darkness, to the weight of oppression that covers a nation.

And so, we talk about Christianity and we talk about those tribes and countries that we've got to reach before the Lord comes. If you'll excuse my saying, a lot of it is nonsense when we get right down to the practical. Apart from a few countries, where is the gospel penetration in depth? Can anybody imagine what it is to talk to people that just look at you. Never smile. Never change. You know, all our theories come tumbling down in a hurry.

Such is a land where everything, sooner or later, is overtaken and consumed by death. If we go into one of these mission fields, where that kind of evil spiritual atmosphere reigns, we are liable to come under the power of that darknessunless there is a greater power of God within us.

Trusting commitment. How then do we go to such a mission field? Well, we go there by total commitment, by trusting fully that the every power and glory of God that we've seen in the scripture will manifest themselves in the works He has called us to do.

There is no such thing as a response in measure. There's nothing worse than a person who gives himself to God to do the Lord's work in a measure. Of course, we don't consciously do this; we do this unconsciously. We call it taking care of our
health. We call it being practical. We call it our responsibility to our family.

I've seen people who said, "Someday, after we've gotten married and after our baby is born, we'll go down to the mission field." Forget it! That kind of people seldom make it! If you hear God's voice, it's always today with Him. He never tells me what He is going to ask or demand of me next year or six months from now or even tomorrow. The only way is to say, "Yes, Lord. Lord, I hear you and I come right away. I don't need to seek counsel from anybody else."

Someone talked about life being like playing checkers. You say, "I know I can win. So, I let my opponent take this piece and that piece and another piece for the time being" But suddenly you realize you don't have enough pieces left! That happens to us all the time spiritually speaking. We hesitate and we procrastinate, and then we miss our opportunity.

When God calls, He doesn't want somebody who is dreaming of the future. He wants a man who can face the demands and make the decisions and step into life. God wants a people that have got a vision of the power and glory of God manifested in this dry and thirsty land. He wants a people who can say, "Lord, as I've seen so would I see."

Jesus came to do the works of God. The early church did the works of God mightily. Not so today. It's not the book knowledge of God that's missing. It's the works of God that are being neglected. This is what God wants to lead us into; this is what God has got before each one of us. There's a calling. And it's not just somebody else. There have still got to be great renunciations if there are going to be great careers in God.

I'll close with this. After Francis of Assisi died, his disciples mechanized the process and set up the structure of the Franciscan Order. But there was one man that wouldn't come under the discipline they were trying to put on him. Finally, the one in charge said to this person, "Brother John, come down from that mountain." Brother John replied, "But I've heard another voice." Man can say what he likes. Circumstances can say what they like. The only thing God is interested in is people that hear "another voice" and obey it to the exclusion of all else. o

Adapted from a message by Paul Ravenhill, who was a missionary in South America for over twenty-five years. Currently in the U.S., he writes for the Internet. www.ravenhill.org

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