Do not suppose it is a small matter to have a desire to know the things of God, to understand the mysteries of what motivates Him, to have in your soul a hunger for His Word and to know the part of Him from where His Word is birthed to take its designated form.
Do not suppose it is a small thing to care about and want to protect the plans of God, to glorify the love of His Son and to honour the power of His Holy Spirit. Do not suppose either that your zeal, your commitment, your enthusiasm and your passion for the Lord counts for nothing, for even though what we present to Him may look and feel like a mere drop of an ocean to He who is forever abundant, they are in truth mustard seeds, which are the smallest in size, yet when it grows in the stature of the truth and grace of Christ and the power and humility of the Holy Spirit, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a fully grown tree of righteousness, so that birds of the air come to pick the fruits you are bearing to present to the Father, who is a lover of all fruits everlasting and especially delights in fruits blossomed out of justice, righteousness and kindness .
Or do not think that the mere action of closing one bible and immediately reaching out to read your next, without so much as lifting your eyes, is a forgettable thing to God. Even though we may have the humility to think, what’s one bible, 5, 10 or even a thousand- can the hunger for the word ever match the number of times we read and highlight, eat and breathe it? For we are to always hunger and thirst and breathe of the Word more that we actually read it, because our hunger, thirst and need to inhale the word and the desire to reach out and caress and kiss the words that Jesus said, will keep us going and growing, lest we grow lazy, complacent, proud and become a stumbling block to God.
It is hunger at its initial emergence, this tiny drop of the ocean, a dash of star dust in the expanse of the night sky, which in its infantile stage may still be impure and diluted because we have yet to grow into the full stature of Jesus by the full power of the Holy Spirit. But this hunger grows and transforms as a craving, from a craving to a need to a passion, from passion to an entrenched, deep-rooted love within you to co-create the eternity that you alone can help contribute towards the Father’s dream family house. If you have in your heart to hand-make a royal crown for our God as gift to the Father for His eternity, see that we are all unique precious stones and gems. His eternity is His life, for the life of an eternal God is eternity, and don’t you dare think He will not notice one diamond missing from the crown.
This initial hunger that feeds to grow into passion is a gift from the Father, active and living in us through Jesus as we abide in His Word, and as the Holy Spirit passionately and attentively does His work in us as He not only lives in us but fills us completely, only if we let Him. It is our Father who looks into the core of our cores, and the Holy Spirit scrutinises each of our thoughts and motives, sifts us like sands till He finds the gold nuggets He is looking for, as if He is unwrapping a gift within a gift, and there, He finds the purity and cleanliness of our hunger, that tiny 1% that He finds useful to advance His plans and realise His dreams. And He is gracious and loving to show us the speck of purity amidst the mass of impurity in us while we are still sinners and hostile to Him, show us what we were made of from the dust of the earth when it was still uncontaminated by sin, and His breath of life exhaled into us from His mouth which overflowed from a heart which has not been grieved by men- and there it is, He shows us the tiny drop of who we are as He sees us and has always known us, and indeed is what keeps His from destroying us altogether. And it is for us to stand in complete awe of Him because we have grown so jaded and world-weary that our hearts are hardened to believe that there can be any God-worthy goodness in us, that our Father in heaven should send His one and only begotten Son to salvage our souls for greater things than these, so that we may truly love Him more than these, when we have become so arrogant in our distance from the one who is truly humble and graceful to consider why He should even do anything for us, or backslide into reverse thinking that we are not sinners in need of repentance- that He should do anything for us after all that we have done and said to Him- let alone show us how He sees us, how He wants to see us, how He saw us before He brought us out of Himself, and what He has always imagined us to be for we are made in the goodness of His image. He cups the specks of diamond dust in His hands with a gentle smile on His face, the diamond dust shimmering in the glory of the light of His face, to coax us and encourage us to continue, to go further, to love, to believe, to have faith, to never stop seeking Him, to never stop wanting to be where He is, to never stop wondering what He thinks about every moment, and to never stop loving Him as He never stopped loving us.
He takes that bit of diamond dust that we stirred up within ourselves in hunger and want when the calling of God through Jesus and the magnificent convictions of the Holy Spirit reached our hearts and took its root there, for it is from the initial conviction of the Holy Spirit that we confess we are sinners saved by grace and by the Spirit that we may confess “Jesus is Lord”, a truth in which goodness can start to take its course in our lives. And with His own hands, the Father stoops over us as He once did when He brought us forth out of His perfect imagination and knowing wisdom, and He sweeps away the sands and sediments that had collected and settled there as an unsteady and destructible foundation that had no truth in it, it had no Jesus in it, and while we are still on our knees in repentance and in tears, He shows us the diamond dusts that is scattered amongst us, speckled and confused because they have yet to resume oneness and sameness and togetherness with God, as they eagerly wait for us step forward to answer to God’s call. And when we do so, the diamond dust which are as numerous as the stars and invisible to the naked eye but visible to the all-seeing and all-knowing eyes of God, begin to congregate and gather together and form the likeness of a diamond, and what were once shattered and crushed treasures of God because we said NO to Christ will begin to take its new but original form in us when we say YES YES YES to Christ and AMEN AMEN AMEN to the Holy Spirit. But it is still a diamond in the rough- it looks like shattered glass because we once represent the shattered fragments of the Father’s kingdom of dreams because we still have a long way to go in Christ- and it takes the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the work He continues to do in us, the cleansing and the chipping away of the parts and make-ups that is of the man in us and not Jesus in us, and He works hard as He looks at us, looks at Jesus and looks at the clock, and He feels in His bones that the appointed time nearing, and the increasing urgency and importance of His work at hand. For it takes the passion of the Holy Spirit to see the potential in each of us as God has given us talents according to our abilities in hope for us to exceed His expectations and traverse beyond His visions. It takes the wisdom and perfect knowledge and foresight of the Holy Spirit to see and distinguish the true treasures that we are while we are still raw mineral ores in the eyes of God. And it takes His passionate love for Jesus and God to counsel and help us to allow ourselves to sit in patient endurance and God-inspired humility as He without complains and groaning, whittles away the fragments of us that are hostile and useless to the Father, while carefully retains and preserves our individuality and unique God-given natures so that we are not items on a mass produced line, but each of us is a refined, hand-crafted gem by the hands of the Holy Spirit, by the will of the Father and in the exact cast of the Son. How else can we take hold of a life that is truly life, unless we follow and take the exact likeness and representation of He who is the Way, and go with Him into the whole truth so that we too can be the Life? The firstborn of creation and the firstborn from the dead, so that we who look to Him and believe in Him will be raised up for eternal life, which is a renewed lifetime to know God and His Son in a realm where there is no more time or limitations. So that we are not born again in the resemblance of what we were when our sinful minds were hostile to God, but we are newborns in Christ because all that was lost in us has been restored and resurrected, namely our desire to honour the Creator and be in habitual fellowship with Him as our Father, a desire once lost to God which caused the muddy, trampled waters of sinfulness to flow onto God’s lap as an offensive fountain of fear, hatred and indifference. And now we have the Lord’s living waters which is continually welling within us unto eternal life to wash the Father’s lap clean of our offences and trespasses. The Holy Spirit knows which parts of us must be resurrected, re-installed, renovated, restored and discarded. It is not us who can see ourselves as the Lord sees us because He is the seven-fold Spirit of knowledge, wisdom, understanding, perfection and the fear of the Lord. It is not us who would have repented in tears, on our knees but for the conviction of the Holy Spirit done out of love. God is love, and so too the Spirit of Truth which goes out from the Father is love. The Holy Spirit is love, and He loves to convict us in regard to sin, righteousness and judgment because the verdict of His conviction is just and righteous, and the fruits of His conviction in us are justice and righteousness, and the effect of that on the Father is delight and pure satisfaction. This can only occur if we not only love the Holy Spirit for His passion for us, but we must believe the verdict of His convictions and accept the correction, discipline and rebuke. We must not only accept them, but welcome them, and see them as pivotal as the air that we breathe, for in truth it is by the Holy Spirit that we may sustain God’s breathe of life in us.
Yes, it is the Lord who says “I am making everything new”. But is it not up to us individually to take this word by faith and apply it now into our current status at this present age, and not delay or hinder for its fulfilment the age to come of the Lord so desires? Is it not us who have the authority to turn our faith into practical knowledge, and testify with the Holy Spirit about Jesus for we have been with Jesus from the beginning? Since the Lord is making everything new, then let it begin now and continue beyond the eternity of an eternal God, and let it make everything in us new so that we are truly born again to be like the first born, grow to be newborn grownups, and not remain as newborn infants, all the while retaining the innocence and blameless quality the Father so dearly prizes. Did He not choose His Son to enter the world with the full innocence as a newborn baby? And are we not to be imitators of the Lord, who died as a Son of Man and Son of God, fully reconciled into one glorified body, bringing harmony between the two so we may follow suit? And as each parts of the body of Christ, are we not to be in perfect harmony and unison with His body, so that we may bring more glory to the one who the Father has glorified again and again?
If we don’t affectionately allow the Holy Spirit to guide us into ALL truth through sword-wielded, razor-sharp, double-edged revelations to bear the harder teachings, which leave us on either side on the Word if we don’t attain the ability to walk in its polished cutting balance, and with that comes conviction in the form of rebukes, disciplines, corrections for the requisite improvements, we will never acquire the exquisite taste and preference for the finest wine and the most brilliant treasures God has in offer in His private vaults. Ones that He longs to show you because He loves to share with you the goodness that is Him, and He freely but stealthily puts on display through Jesus for us to be His eternal witnesses. Jesus is the image of the invisible God and since the creation of the world, God has made His invisible qualities in His Son, so that men who have clearly seen and understood from what has been made but STILL do not believe, are without excuse and await judgment. The love of His firstborn the Father has freely given you as He has so freely received, so that He may excite you, entice you, attract and encourage you to confidently and freely give to Him as Jesus has so generously and willingly given us. Through Jesus all things were made, without Him nothing was made that has been made, and without Him no right to become children of God can be inherited and so through Jesus we are all born again and made new by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In New Jerusalem, the brilliance of an eternal God is openly on display so that all eyes may see and all hands my touch her. She shines with the glory of God and her brilliance like a very precious jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. She has gates made of single pearls and foundations made of precious stones. She has walls of jasper and streets of pure gold, where the gold is good. She has fruit trees with seeds of colour diamonds, and the bride of the King of Kings has a tiara fashioned in the likeness of a rainbow which glows with radiance, as it basks in the glory of God and the lamp of the Lord.
But all this is the outward display of our God who has His flamboyant and opulent public persona, but what of His private, more elusive and introverted personality? If He has New Jerusalem displayed as His prized extravaganza as the most brilliant and luminous treasure, a bride fit for His firstborn, then what of His private collection of riches reserved for those who have always shared His heart and understood His dreams and longed for the realisation of His empire of visions, for His sake and the sake of His kingdom? What treasures has He set aside to show those who have answered His call early and diligently, lovingly and delightfully, just like His Son Jesus Christ? What are those treasures like- the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places? Will not those treasures, the ones He hides away in His bed chambers under His covers, appear plain at first sight, but are with much more intensity and lustre than a mile high jasper wall as pure as glass? A simple man with His simple pleasures, who can fathom, unless they see and comprehend and come to love the distinctive dichotomy of His character and personality? The double-edged sword that makes the dual side of Him- His creation and destruction, His gentleness and wrath, His silence and thunders, His justice and mercy, His simplicities and His luxuries. And who better to show you all facets of the Father but Jesus who knows Him, and the Spirit of God who goes out from the Father? The simplicity and unfussiness of our God who chose His Son to enter the world as a carpenter’s son, instead of the luxury of a king’s palace, though He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. And as we observe the life of Jesus, He was not the one who parted the Red Sea, who called down fire from heaven, or who ascended to heaven in a firey chariot. Jesus performed miracles all of the Father’s prophets were privy to. He healed the sick, raised the dead, multiplied food for the multitudes. He was not like David who was particularly handsome, or like Samson who was strong, nor was He highly regarded as the prophet Elijah. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him- but yet this was the image of the invisible God- expressive of the power of simplicity in our Father- like the many facets of a diamond caught in a ray of sunlight, so that we may ponder and remember and be familiarised with the outward public expression God chooses to manifest in, and also the quiet and personal side of Him that He reveals perfectly through Jesus, His most prized treasure, with whom He is well pleased and by whom He allowed us to mature by imitation. The Father who was looking for the one good pearl, and when He found it in Jesus, that was the standard by which are pearls are assessed, and we must form the full likeness of Jesus in us so that we are not casted out, but reserved for His private, solitary moments when He loves to take His treasures out to enjoy and admire.
The luxury of God is His simplicity, and the simplicity of God is His luxury. The one who loves to walk in the cool of the day in His garden, now wants us to walk with Him in the cool of the day when there is no more day or night, to walk with Him throughout eternity, to be His companions as fully grown sons and daughters like Jesus, to converse with Him and confide in Him, to walk with Him to the edges of eternity where decisions do not yet manifest in its designed form, sit and hover there with the same passion as the Holy Spirit when He hovered over the waters, our legs dangling over the edge of the cascades of timelessness and ask each other, “What shall we do next?” And if He says to you, “I want another harvest”, then if all this was to repeat itself in another eternity, and another sacrifice needed to be made, then you may step up and save Jesus from it. Not because we can replace Jesus, or that we would even consider it, but because we love our brother, and one sacrifice of the Lamb is more than enough. Not that we want to take over our Lord or usurp His position in God’s heart, let God have the kindness to strike us if we do, but because we treasure Him, and we have grown in His precise stature and likeness that as sons and daughters of God, any sacrifice we make on His behalf has the same significance and worth as the sacrifice He had made for us when He was calling us ‘friends’, and as friends, not as fully restored brothers and sisters did He lay down His life for us, only for us to take it up again in Him when we take on the fullness of official Sonship and Daughtership. If you want to give our God options, to give Him maximum freedom to move and soar in His eternity, then we must treasure what we have been given. The Lord has set and planned eternity in our hearts and minds, so that we can fathom what God has done from the beginning even to the end, and to work out which edge is beginning and which edge is end.
So let us continue to change through repentance and free ourselves from all things worldly, temporal and not of God that are in our hearts and minds, so that the eternity the Lord has set and planned in us may be let loose on earth as it is let loose in heaven. Let us honour our Father in imitation of Him by going the extra mile for Him, and also set and plan His eternity in our heart and mind, soul, spirit and strength. So that we may store up treasures on earth as the Spirit of Revelation releases the Lord’s treasures of truth to us, and also store up treasures in heaven for our God for His eternity. Grab hold with fervour and zeal, each revelation the Holy Spirit gives you whether He whispers in your ear or proclaims on the rooftop, let us cherish, respect and hold on tightly to the diamond sprinkles and the avalanches, because we are going to need each and every minute particle to reach and attain the fullness of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Eat them as your food, inhale them as a pleasing aroma and wear them proudly like a royal diadem and let them wash over you like a rushing surge of living waters. That even though you may feel like you have lost your footing and will be swept away by the enormity of God’s revelations as they hasten their pace towards you when time runs short, remember that your foundation is in Christ, the only Rock and chief cornerstone, that even under the immense power of the Holy Spirit’s waterfall and the force of His storms, you will achieve and retain stillness and quiet confidence.
For this is the passion of the Holy Spirit, to carve out from willing and agreeable diamonds in the rough, hand-crafted and personalised by His hands, perfect precious stones and gems in the likeness and brightness of Jesus Christ, to join the ranks of an official Sonship and Daughtership, offering unto our Father an eternal service of love and a love of service. And in our oneness and togetherness with the Holy Spirit, He persistently and without complaints takes on the enormous and essential task of carving and shaping us into the likeness of our brother, and He delicately but resolutely whittles away while we are still in our confined bodies with the brittleness of clay jars, because He can see into the core of our cores. He was there when the Father wrote and set His eternity in our hearts and minds, and He is here with us now as eternity lights up like a fire in us, like an inextinguishable flame which propels our thoughts and motives in motion as we aspire to our full calling in Jesus, an infinite desire for God’s perfect eternity which burns in our hearts and minds so that all dross of silver is burned out to reveal the white gold as pure as glass. To be just like the perfect Son for the perfect Father by the Spirit of perfection- to be the perfect gift for God for His private collections of treasures.
To say that the Holy Spirit’s passion is in Sonship and Daughhtership is merely scraping the surface or stepping into the mouth of a deep and mysterious cave. If we long to know the full depth, width, length and height of the Holy Spirit’s passion, even those passions that are not related to us, then we not only have to ask, knock and seek in the prescribed way, we must attain at least the same level of passion and commitment, if not more, so that we may approach the right door to knock, seek and ask. It is going into the private collection of the treasures of the Holy Spirit, and it is about adding to His collection, not taking any away from Him. It is first seeing that the fruits of His passion are an eternity of Sonship and Daughtership, and going the extra mile, to make the fruits of eternity a passion for Sonship and Daughtership when it is reconciled and united as one. And it all begins with a drop of an ocean, a trickle of desire and a sprinkling of star dust for the Holy Spirit to run with it and take it to its greatest stature and magnitude.
So I ask us all again- what is your passion? And how far into all facets of God do you want it to take you?
AMEN HOLY SPIRIT
