Think Wink.

This past weekend was amazing. My church had a mens retreat. All of us guys went up to a church camp in Russville, MO (I think) called “God’s Mountain.” We were there Friday evening and Saturday morning and afternoon.

Friday, we had supper, grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, and then we worshiped through song and then shared testimonies for about three hours, 9:00pm-12:00am. After that was done, we retired to dorms or just to hang out for some more testimonies. I went to bed but then one of my dorm-mates asked me about eschatology, which I was only happy to oblige. This lasted until 1:00am or 1:30am. I have now been up for almost 23 hours! After sleeping until about 7:30am we had breakfast at 8:30am. Then we had some lay-preaching and then a quiet time. God really put on my heart my failing 2 Corinthians 3:18, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” This mainly stemming from a lacking prayer life. After some prayer, we had more teaching when another thought hit me from Galatians 5:22-23 and the fruit of the Spirit and also John 7:37-39 where John records, “On the last day of the feast, the greatest day, Jesus stood up and shouted out, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. Just as the scripture says, ‘”From within him will flow rivers of living water.”‘ (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.)” (NET, see note 103). I’ll come back to this thought later. After this time of lay-preaching, we broke into small groups and we got intimate with each other, exposing some of our deepest recesses to others. It was amazing. Then we broke for lunch. After which we had our final session of lay-preaching that brought the whole weekend to a beautiful close. Then we had the option to leave, shoot some rifles, or whatever. Some of us went exploring the woods behind the camp, away from the direction that the others were shooting. Then we went to watch one guy who is in part of the Marine Recon., sort of like the SEALs or Rangers but only for the Marines. That man could fire three shots faster than the other guys fired one. It was incredible. One the way home, the three other guys who rode with me and I had a discussion outlining the preterist interpretation of Matthew 24. It took almost the entire way from Russville(?) until we hit MBTS where we met. A good weekend.

Now back to what hit me over the head this weekend that I needed to remind myself. It can be boiled down to one statement: I don’t bear the fruit of the Spirit, the Spirit bears the fruit of the Spirit. Love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. That is what the Spirit does, not me. I can’t do that. Yet I have preached and I have tried to do that. But I can’t. I upset one guy at the camp because he is into political conspiracy “theory” (I put that into quotes because I am skeptical of what he says, but he is very convinced of what he has read) when I poked fun at him for it. I failed to love. I did not bear fruit. I was not the overflowing fountain of life. But upon reading John 7:37-39 and Galatians 5:22-23 with 2 Corinthians 3:18 running wild in my head, it hit me. My struggle is not to love people, or to be joyous, or to be patient etc. My struggle is to behold Christ. My struggle is to behold the glory of Christ. In keeping Christ in view, the Spirit will overflow in my life with fruit. He will bear his fruit in me. When I struggle to bear the fruit that only the Spirit can bear, I am in the way of the Spirit. These are no longer works of the Spirit but works of the flesh. Paul says I need to look to Christ, Jesus says I need to just come to him in faith and he will make the Holy Spirit overflow in my life. I look to Christ, and he will change me. Just the beholding of Christ’s glory will change me (2 Corinthians 3:18).

It is interesting that we never think like this. We look at John 7 and Galatians 5 as implied imperatives even though they are spoken in indicative terms. So we attack them by trying with all of our might to be loving and joyful and peaceful etc. But only the Spirit yields these fruits, not us. We live by the Spirit, that is an imperative in Galatians 5:16. But to do this in our own strength is not living by the Spirit. The question is, how do we receive the Spirit to live by it? Jesus says to come to him by faith and the Spirit will overflow in him. We come to Jesus and he will take care of the Spirit, we just need to trust him.

Or let us look at it in a more Pauline context. 2 Corinthians 3 says that we have a veil over our minds, so that whenever we hear Moses (or the Word of God) we do not hear the Word, as our minds are closed by the veil. Our minds are blind to this glory of the Word. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4 we see that we are blind as unbelievers by the work of Satan to the glory of Christ. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. But the question is how can one see Christ to turn to him? Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:6 that God commands the light of his glory to shine in our hearts in the face of Christ. We then turn to Christ and lose the veil. Beholding that glory that God’s creative command caused us to see, we are being changed into the image of Christ, from one degree of glory–that of the ministry of death and of Moses–to another–that of the Lord Jesus Christ and his Spirit.

I behold Christ, which I cannot do unless God causes me to behold it, and his glory changes me. The Spirit comes into my life and yields its fruit. I am no longer the diseased tree but the good tree. I no longer bear diseased and bad fruit, but good fruit. I pray daily to see the glory of Christ and to never look away from that glory so that it might have its changing work in my life. I look at Christ, and Christ makes me like him: loving, joyous, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled. Pray today that God too will open your eyes to see his glory in Christ. It was Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians in Ephesians 1:17-19 NET,

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you spiritual wisdom and revelation in your growing knowledge of him, – since the eyes of your heart have been enlightened – so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe, as displayed in the exercise of his immense strength.

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