Spiritual Paralysis

In my post: The Same Old Same Old, I say, “For the repentant water-baptised Christian a divine exchange has taken place … death for life – eternal life … God’s life – eternal in quality, eternal in quantity.  No man-centered rules, laws or obligations to adhere to, but rather, allegiance and obedience to the Lord Himself as the indwelling Holy Spirit reveals the word of God to us and empowers us to live it out.”  I was in conversation with both a fellow Christian and a church elder one time and I spoke of this glorious freedom we have in Christ from man-centered rules etc, and the elder said, “Yes, but we still have rules, laws and obligations.”  I said, “True, but whose are they?”  No answer.

Why no answer?  In his long years as a Christian, I don’t believe the elder had ever stopped to consider there was such a question.  Like so many Christian people he had been around churches since his early teens, getting on with the job of “doing it.”  He was a business manager and like so many of them, that’s how he operated his ministry in the church – efficient, astute, knows the problems, knows the solutions – “been doing this for years!”  Elder or not, such a Christian as this man will rarely stop to consider the distinctions between what’s God-centered versus man-centered when it comes to rules, laws or obligations.  He sees them as one and the same.    

If this issue was isolated simply to the individual, then one could say there’s no big deal; maybe one day God will reveal and show him that he’s caught up in stuff that’s not biblical and then he’s able to make the adjustments as the Holy Spirit prompts.  But the issue is never isolated to an individual … others in the church catch the “disease” as well.  Any Christian in the church who fails to distinguish the God-centered from the man-centered runs the great risk of becoming and remaining spiritually paralyzed for the duration of their natural life.  To my mind, the disease of spiritual paralysis is one major explanation for the church’s poor witness throughout the western world.

In the context of ‘physical paralysis’ the dictionary defines it as the state of helpless stoppage, inactivity, or inability to act.  There’s no such physical paralysis in the church … just the opposite in fact – no helpless stoppage, plenty of activity and plenty of ability to act.  Good ideas abound.  But how about God ideas? Or rather – how about our allegiance and obedience to the Lord Himself to, Seek first the kingdom of God….. ? Matthew 6:33.  How about, Go into all the world and preach the gospel….In My name they will cast out demons….they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover ? Mark 16:15-19.  How about, And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word with accompanying signs ? Mark 16:20.

More.  How about, …..you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be witnesses to Me…  ? Acts 1:8.  The elder I mentioned earlier, he could rattle  Scriptures off from the pulpit, but not so later, in “fellowship.”  Not so with his business staff either.  Spiritual paralysis was his disease and that’s why it’s the disease of many people in his church – the disease of lots of churches, everywhere.  I am 64-plus years old and I have never had a Christian share the gospel with me, anywhere.  Home-renting for 7 years, home-ownership for 41 years, I have never had a door-knock from a Christian offering prayer for needs or sickness, whether I needed them or not.

Am I having a pity party here?  No.  This post is written to encourage all who read it to come away with the Lord by yourself and ask Him to show you the degree of your spiritual paralysis.  It can almost be guaranteed you have this disease if you are sitting under the leadership of men from the institutional church, whether yours be a traditional denomination or a Christian fellowship.  There’s very little difference between them in spite of what you’re told.  They all have their rules, laws and obligations and you are not fully accepted by others in there until you embrace them like they have.  If it were any different the church would give evidence of it.

In far too many churches and fellowships God’s people are made to feel guilty if they’re not, “doing something for Jesus.”  If they’re not measuring up, sooner or later someone is going to come to them.  But I want to say this … it is not Jesus who’s tipping that on you.  It is a Jesus of that person’s creation – a rules-based, law-based, obligations-based Jesus.  The apostle Paul spoke of this as another Jesus 2 Corinthians 11:4.  No wonder many of us have  been spiritually paralyzed under him – we didn’t receive his spirit, we didn’t accept his gospel in the first place.  This Jesus is a foreigner.  We don’t know him because we don’t understand his language.

The language of the biblical Jesus is the kind of language that exhorts, edifies and comforts 1 Corinthians 14:3.  But unless we do take the time to daily come away with Him to a quiet place so as we can learn from Him the distinctions between what’s God-centered versus man-centered, you can back it in you will never truly be God-centered.  Those other things will get in the way and instead of enjoying God you find Him to be a bit of a task master.  In other words, the Lord may really be wanting you to take some time out and get away from it all, but that’s foreign language to you … you know you should be at the working bee – or the bible study – or the prayer meeting – or the church seminar – or – or…….! 

Someone says, “But a moment ago you just spoke about the gospel … ‘how about, Go, Go.'”  Yes, but unless you come away and be with the Lord and allow Him to personally teach you over time (lots of time) how He wants you to prepare for it, it’s never going to happen anyway with any real meaning.  Instead of joyfully experiencing the miraculous wonders of God’s eternal life as He works in, through and upon you if you do go, all you will experience is death – ala works, methods, formulas, how to’s etc that others have used … and they didn’t work for them either!  That’s why they continue to talk about “going” but don’t go themselves.

God is fully aware of our disease, spiritual paralysis. That is why He will not call us to do anything for Him that He won’t be with us in … teaching, encouraging, empowering, enabling, with plenty of freedom to make mistakes as we do it.  God is not a task master.  He doesn’t load burdens one after the other upon us Matthew 11:30.  In serving the Lord, if your yoke is not easy and your burden is not light then you are not serving Jesus, it’s as simple as that.  You are serving someone and something else.  But you can never know who or what until you come away with the Lord.  The sad reality is that multitudes of dear Christian people don’t believe this and it grieves God, because there’s little He can do.  The Lord is a Gentleman, He doesn’t barge in.

There is no freedom like the freedom God gives when undertaking His work, whether that be doing or speaking on His behalf.  When we lose such freedom, it means we’ve handed it over … often that will happen because we’ve been seeking the approval of others – or wanting to appease them.  Even God doesn’t want us seeking His approval because in the Lord Jesus we already have it.  My practice is to thank God and praise Him for what He’s allowed me to participate in and then hand it back at the end of the day.  As for thinking we must appease the Lord, well, that simply grieves Him.

Speaking of church people and good ideas.  Recently I learned of cancer taking it’s deeper hold on a man who used to be a good friend, but when I turned to the Lord all those years ago, the relational gap between us got wider and wider.  Although we’ve met on the odd occasion since, at the mere mention of the Lord Jesus and the Bible he’s never failed to show and verbalize his disdain.  I no longer preach to him but when in conversation he seeks to match his philosophy along similar lines to Scriptural revelation I will always inform him where there’s a clash.  Although he’s is still searching for life’s answers he continues to reject the biblical Lord Jesus. 

It is some two years since I’ve seen this man so this morning in prayer I asked the Lord for His viewpoint on what I should do.  I stopped praying for him years ago, but today it seemed like a good idea to get in touch with him again so I laid it all before God.  There was quite a pause, and then firmly came, “He who rejects you rejects Me and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me” Luke 10:16.  I’ve been thinking about this at a level much deeper than ever before.  This is the first time I’ve seen such rejection as two-fold … it’s one thing to continually reject Jesus but it’s something else altogether to continually reject God the Father.  God experiences the double insult here.   

Why the double insult?  Firstly: God sent His One and only Son as Savior to the rescue.  He did not send a half a dozen of them so we could pick and choose. When one continually decides he or she will pick and choose, the Lord Jesus gets insulted.  It’s an on-going insult to Him.  Secondly: Jesus, the Son, means everything to the Father … not something – everything!  So when God the Father’s EVERYTHING continually gets rejected in preference for something, He too is rejected and insulted – continually. There’s no going back from there, usually.  Most people die the way they lived.

Is it all over for this man?  I don’t know.  But what I do know is, if I was a rules, laws and obligations-based Christian, I would have failed to discern the distinctions between what is God-centered versus man-centered.  Like far too many Christians caught up in that stuff, I would have acted because it would have seemed like a good idea to do so and a bad idea not to do so.  Based on my current knowledge of his attitude towards the Lord, I would have done so as a “diseased” Christian.  The disease? Spiritual paralysis.  Having been healed from it, I wait for God to further reveal more on the situation – or not. “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You.” Isaiah 26:3. “….But on this one will I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word.” Isaiah 66:2.