by Richard Gazowsky
I’ve mentioned this before; the closer I get to the Lord, the more fascinated I am by how different He is from me and how His reasoning is so much higher than mine. I sometimes have a hard time comprehending what the Lord is actually doing. And believe me, I am not presuming that I will one day understand Him! But please join me in a study of His complexity.
Many Christians, before they became saved, were pretty lawless individuals. Though they were told smoking was bad for them, they smoked anyway. When told, “Don’t experiment with drugs,” they did, and then moved from vice to vice in experimentation. Then salvation would come, and the Spirit of God immediately put them in line with the laws of God, and then suddenly they’re not breaking rules, are monogamous in relationships and pretty much get in line with society.
God does this miracle in our lives by supernaturally breaking thousands of laws. By this, I mean the laws of sin and death. You have sinned for most of your life and have been deserving of all of the punishments provided for those that do such things. But now the blood of Jesus has superseded any law that would condemn you to hell and the grave. This is an amazing thing about salvation, but is not the subject that I am addressing. I am just laying a foundation for a character study of the Lord.
Many Christians, after they get saved, get involved in what we would call a legalistic religious institution. Many of these institutions honor and celebrate laws and rules so strictly that they forget the sovereignty of God; He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. The King has the ability to break any law. By this I mean any law. I have studied the word for “any” in its Greek origin; it really does mean any! So the issue becomes, to the legalistically-minded, that when a doctor says it’s going to take six weeks for a broken bone to heal, that this signals God’s natural law and it is not comfortable to hear someone say, “God can heal you in an instant”. To the strictly religious mind that has now become based on legalism, God would be breaking His own natural law of healing, and this becomes a concept that is too extreme to consider from a safe position of legalism. I understand this struggle; many people are bound by this type of legalism and cannot believe in anything that they cannot personally understand. Of course, this cuts out about 99% of all of the actions of God on planet Earth, because the Scriptures do tell us that His ways are not like our ways, for as high as the heavens are above the Earth, so are God’s ways above ours. This truth does not leave much room for human understanding or comprehension.
Now I come to the core, core revelation. So what happens to us, those of us who have seen enough miracles to realize that the miracle actions of God are incomprehensible to the natural mind? We have begun to understand that God’s sovereignty circumvents all layers of human and natural laws and that God reserves the right to do what He will do. I am currently in a position where God is blessing me with the most undeserved blessing that any man could ever receive. In the process of receiving this blessing I have discovered a new aspect of God’s way of testing people and preparing them for massive, undeserved blessing. To illustrate what I am saying, I would like to take a moment to look at the opposite end of the spectrum. When a person receives a sudden flush of money, (winning the lottery for example), or any other random secular blessing, usually the person’s reaction is to burn quickly through the blessing, losing all their friendships and ending up with a very destructive personality to boot. But God is a good Father! When He blesses us, He takes us through a refining process that cleans impurities out of our system so that when we receive the blessing, it does not destroy us, it only enhances what is inside of us. The Scriptures clearly declare that it is God’s desire to bless all of His children without measure. I am convinced that the reason this does not occur as often as it should is because the vast majority of people have not understood the aspect of God that I am about to share.
So, what is it? What is the special thing that God does to people that are about ready to be blessed? He blesses those that you despise and then He watches what your reaction is. If He sees in you a heart of mercy and no condemnation, then He knows that you are ready to be blessed. But if He sees you criticizing the other person for “getting away with murder”, He knows that you are not yet worthy to receive His unmerited blessings. If this is the first time you’ve ever heard this principle, it might take you a little while to “get it”. You must first understand that God reserves the divine right to do what He wills. That means He can circumvent any normal rule or principle, and in His ability to do so, He tests you to see if there is any inkling of evil in you that is a response to His goodness. Jesus tells a parable about this principle. There was a group of workers contracted to a farmer to work for one penny a day. Later in the afternoon, the farmer contracted with another group for the same amount. But then, during the last hour of the work day, he saw some men still waiting in the town square for employment. He hired them without contract and simply said, “I will pay you what I will.” At the end of the day, the workers that had worked all day long got the same amount of money as the workers who had only worked the last hour of the day. So the all-day-long workers complained to the farmer, “We worked all day and got a penny. But these guys only worked an hour and they got the same pay that we got.” The farmer looked at them and said, “Are you evil because I am good?” When God shows mercy upon someone that appears to you to be undeserving, are you evil because God is good?
Eight years ago I received a prophecy that there were two ministries that would excel beyond my ministry and they would rise up through the penetration into the movie industry that my company had made. The Lord warned me, “Don’t become jealous of them because in three years you will have great relationship with them.” These are the ways of God that I have been recently discovering. As of today, I do not know what or who these two ministries are, but I am currently seeing every other thing that prophets have mentioned come to pass. So I do know that soon I will face the test. Will I be evil because God is so good? May we all pass this test!!
I know many of you are busy. Here’s something to think about when you’re busy:
Richard Gazowsky pastors a church in San Francisco called The Voice of Pentecost, and is also president of Christian WYSIWYG Filmworks. He has directed the films, “Guardians” and “The Roman Trilogy.”
3 Comments
June 16, 2008 at 8:02 pm
“Pray for those who revile you. Bless those who curse you”. “The rain falls on the just..and the unjust”. “God is kind to the faithful as well as the unfaithful”.
The pastor’s letter brings up some good points re. God’s Attributes. ‘Words’ are important. “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh”. ‘Words’ conveyed are a good indicator as to where a human being may “be” in his, or her spiritual walk.
I like the choice of the term, ‘circumnavigate’, as opposed to, ‘circumvent’, as the latter appears to “entrap” the laws of God, while the former “goes around” His laws.
When articulating the premise that God is certainly able to circumnavigate his (written) laws; I like to see God circumvent(!) His Holy Word, in toto.
For instance: Does the New Testament circumnavigate or circumvent the Old Testament? Do these terms even apply to such a question?!
Pehaps these 2 questions don’t neccessarily apply to the pastor’s message at all.
Jesus and the Apostle Peter are both on record as stating(or re-enforcing the statement), “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will remain..”.
This means, to me anyway, that God may ‘go around’, or, ‘entrap’ His Old Testament Decrees and Law(s) and Commandments, but doesn’t the Old Testament, also, enable us to further understand Jesus’ Words and ensuing New Testament Writings?
Further, do we assume the ‘liberty’ that we have as christians contradict the Old Testament Narratives?
The “Beatitudes”, not only reference the Old Testament’s, ‘10 Commandments’ as a predicate for His Sermon-on-the-Mount, but strengthen and enhance the meaning and vitality of those commandments. To whit: ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery(you have heard of old..), but I say, whosoever looks upon a woman with lust has broken the commandment…”.
In the Old Testament, Israelites we’re ‘off the hook’ if they just refrained from the actual act of adultery; in the New Testament, christian and Jew are back ‘on the hook’ w/o actually committing the act of adultery.
“Mercy rejoiceth against judgement”; so now christians and Jews(and anyone else for that matter) are …’off-the-hook’, once again, as we choose to subscribe to Jesus’ faithful Words, including the Book of Hebrew’s discussion on Jesus being our high-priest and going through the veil, once, for all of our sins.
I believe that Jesus’ juxtapositioning of the 10 Commandments with his Sermon-on-the-Mount goes a very long way in articulating and displaying some of God’s Character and Attributes to the average reader of the Holy Bible.
What I really don’t think I can afford to do with my faith, or my mind at this juncture of my ‘walk’; is stray from either the Old or New Testament Narratives.
To be sure, the New Testament ‘understanding’ of God vastly differentiates from the Old Testament ‘understanding’. There is a ‘doing away with the Old..’; there is a ‘new and living way..’; passages w/in the New Testament that really articulate revolutionary changes in God’s dealings w/ his own people, but I’m not able to say that God “contradicts” His Old Testament Passages.
Both the Old and New Testament writings are imperative to my paucity of understanding God; his mercy, his anger, his love, his jealousy, his way of salvation, his way of condemnation, his admonishments–to name a few of His facets.
In conclusion, therefore, when I see God blessing ‘my enemy’(for instance), I find it more facile..serene, personally, to consult w/ those scriptural passages I note at the top of this ‘response’, rather than ‘wrestle’ w/ the possibly-entrenched psychology of ensued jealousy or personal recrimination of my-own-failed-walk-with-God.
It’s easier!!
God’s Word says that he is kind to the unfaithful. God’s Word says that the rain falls on the just(believer) as well as the unjust(person who refuses Christ’s Message of Salvation)!
Yes, it’s important to examine my faith; important to see a reflection of bitterness/jealousy, on my part, when someone-else gets greater blessing than I, from the Almighty.
But, does not God’s Word enable me to walk through ’such a small trial’ with belief in, say..”God is no respecter of persons”? Would I not, therefore, be calling God a ‘liar’, should I choose to “murder”(in my heart) someone else who received an “ostentatious display” of blessing from the Lord, while I haven’t?!
The pastor’s letter really brings up a very important and, unfortunately, commonplace issue, regarding God’s “perogatives” on Blessings!!
I am, merely, eating the Word of God–all 66 Books–in order that my ‘mind may be washed by the renewing of (that) Word’–in order that my ‘fleshly desires and prurient interests’, which can be such wasting endeavors(if you will), will be inexorably crucified and supplanted with an on-going reception and ingestion of God’s Word.
Push the cosmos and individual human abasement ..out. Endeavor to pursue the Holiness and wisdom and Love of God…in.
Reading and studying God’s Word, in my estimation, ALL of His Word, repeatedly, should greatly simplify the believer’s walk in the Lord.
I thank the pastor for his letter.
Cordially,
Benjamin Bruner
June 18, 2008 at 5:10 am
Sometimes what looks like a blessing is really a curse.
June 26, 2008 at 6:57 pm
It does should not matter what God is doing in someone else’s life. He can bless whomever he chooses to bless. What should matter to a person is what he is doing in that person’s life. Everything that happens, takes you where he is trying to lead you. One must focus on why a certain thing has happened or has come into or out of one’s life. God is always trying to grow us up. There is always a reason and if we do not understand why, that is where faith comes in.
We may never know until eternity why. We must believe that God knows what he is doing and we must search our actions and the intent of our hearts. With faith, he will get us their hopefully without too much pain and suffering. It is all about how we look at and understand the personality God, and how much of Him we desire in our hearts. We, as believers, must strive to learn His nature and trust in that knowledge of Him.
I am learning to be thankful no matter what my circumstances because I know God is in control. What better thing could there be than for my enemy to come to faith in Jesus Christ through God’s intervention in their life? He knows your enemy and He alone knows how to get them there. Pray for your enemy, don’t question God’s method, believe, and keep your eyes focused on God’s work in your life. Strive to know him; study to show yourself approved, and you will get where He wants you to go.