Miraculously Made Real!

2/12/1993

He answers that prayer to make us real and no longer an issue of “dos” and “don’ts” and “Oh, yeah, what about this and what about that?”—trying to apply principles that seem to contradict each other, and the frustrations that come out of that. The things that He requires of us to make us real (which is a miracle on His part, not something that is earned) is humility of heart. It is a humbleness that says, “Hey, I want to learn. I don’t have to be right, I don’t have to know anything, I don’t have to prove anything, I don’t have to impress anyone. I just want to go forward. I want whatever You want for me, Father.” It is that humility of heart that allows us to be in the place where Isaiah was, where the angel could then come and take the coal from the altar and burn his lips so that he could be sent in the Father’s name. That was an angel’s work, being sent by the Father, and yet he was there. He was saying, “I’m a man of unclean lips.” He saw himself correctly; he had the humility and he wasn’t striving. He was humbling himself before the Father, and that is an essential part of allowing the angel to come with that coal from the altar.

Another aspect is that the angel didn’t come with a fudgesicle or a lollipop from the altar. He came with a coal from the altar. There was a burning process, and so a second thing that is required if we are really going to find this transition to who we are instead of this mechanical striving to try to negotiate that turn, and then running over a few pedestrians and having to pick them up off the pavement. Then we have to decide whether we are willing to start the journey again for fear we might run over someone else again or damage the car. We have all this turmoil.

The way that God makes us real is through that humility of heart that is willing to start over. It is softness, hunger, and humility, but then a willingness to let it be a coal from the altar that burns our lips rather than a lollipop. It is a willingness to say, “If the Son learned obedience by the things that He suffered, I am willing to be scandalized. I’m willing to be humiliated. I’m willing to suffer loss. Father, if this is for my own good that this situation would happen, I embrace that; I receive that. I know that You mean good for me, not harm, and I trust Your sovereignty and I trust Your love. Those two things together make me realize that anything that happens is in Your control. I can trust You and I don’t have to fear. I don’t have to lash out. I don’t have to strive. I can truly trust You and I am willing to learn to obey You by things that I suffer.

1 Peter 4:1—“Those that have suffered in the flesh are done with sin; they don’t live like the Gentiles do any longer, striving after the things of the world.”

There is a process that God brings us through, if we are humble and willing to be burned by a coal from the altar without bracing ourselves against it, or being repulsed by it. We cannot lash out, or run and hide, or have a pity party for ourselves. We have to want it. When that coal is coming at us and the tongs of the angel from the altar, and it’s glowing red, and we know there is going to be pain involved, are we there, submissive and willing and humble, or are we wrestling and trying to escape that coal from the altar?

I want you to know and maybe you all do already that this is truly a supernatural issue to not be in this mechanical position, threatening your own life and everybody’s around you by trying to drive a car that is only a mechanical thing, and you don’t understand how to make it work. You press on the gas pedal and it lunges. You step on the brakes and just about go through the windshield. It’s all externals and principles. You are trying to add one to another; it’s not who you are. It’s not an extension of you all of these principles and things that Jesus and Paul and John and Peter have taught about are not an extension of you yet, it’s just things that you are supposed to do. Well, part of the coal from the altar that will help you to become the person that Jesus wants you to be, and to live in the life that He has offered to you, is the suffering that comes from having wrecked the car or run up on the curb. It is the pain that comes from having blown it, having messed up, having not understood, but still desiring to walk the way of the cross and not lash out or withdraw and hide. But willing to suffer that indignation, willing to suffer the difficulties or struggles or the things we don’t understand, or the things we perceive as injustices, which may be God’s sovereignty ordering our way in order to test our hearts. It is those times when He leads us into the wilderness in order to find out what is in our hearts, as He did the Israelites.

I think we have to recognize that, first of all, it is supernatural, and that we can’t achieve it. You don’t mature into being a man or woman of God, led and filled by the Spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. You don’t mature into that. It cannot be attained. It’s a gift of God, lest any man boast. But the things that you can do is to humble yourself before God, and when you see God high and lifted up and you see the train of His robe filling the temple, you can hide your face before Him and with the angels cry, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” You can humble yourself before Him and offer yourself to Him for whatever may come your way, and in that process He Himself can touch your lips. He can send the messengers, the angels (the same word in the Greek). He can send those to deliver the things to you that will burn your lips and that will set you free to be able to be sent. “Here am I. Send me.” “Well, we have some work to do first.” I know it’s what we all want, but it just occurs to me that in this middle ground of being in the car and moving down the road at fairly high speed, it is very dangerous out there when we are functioning in this mechanical way by principles.

I suspect that if we all just went our own ways right now, if none of us ever saw each other again, I really suspect that there would be some catastrophes out there. Serious catastrophes. Why? Because some drive down the road, making that right hand, hand- over-hand turn with grace and ease, because their eyes are on the destination. The car is an extension of their life, and the principles are very naturally applied, because the Spirit of God lives through them, and so the principles are not apprehended and applied, but they are simply worked out from within, out of the grace of God. They see it, they know it, they understand it.

Others, right now, because you’ve not presented yourselves before God with the humility and hunger and willingness to have a coal burn your lips. You have not been willing to lose your life in order to find it because you have still held on to certain qualities or judgments or material things in your life. Or your reputation or a need for friendship. Because you’ve still hung on to certain things in your life and you have not truly lost it, well you’re out there driving down the road with the rest of us, but you are a hazard to yourself. You have felt the pain of running up on the curb and the mess that has made of other people and situations, and then you have felt the humiliation of having to decide whether you are going to go hide in your room now or you’re going to try again. You have felt all those things. And right now because that supernatural quality has not touched every life in this room because that death to self has not taken place in every life in this room, right now if we were to separate what would happen is everybody would end up in different places, in different groups of believers here, there and everywhere.

Some people would shake everyone and say, “Hey, you have to confess your sins to each other!” and everybody would start doing that possibly, if they could be persuaded to do that. And there’d be so much carnality and judgment and gossip and all kinds of stuff, you wouldn’t even know which end was up, and it would be a disaster. Not grace, not life, but disaster.

Someone else would come along and say, “Hey, you have to share your faith with people at work.” Then it would get so twisted and contorted, people would start losing their jobs, but not for righteousness sake. It would be arrogance and ignorance. Some people would conceivably, be saved, and yet it was a false conversion but nobody would have the discernment to see, supernaturally, that this was not a conversion but they had false motives in the process, so they become leaven in the batch and start winning people after themselves…

What I am saying is that these principles, that we take for granted and build on the foundation of Jesus, make sense and bring life. Those same things, if they are just principles to us rather than the very Life of Christ within us—from the depth of the wellspring of rivers that flow from the inner man, not dumped on us from the outside—because we believe in Jesus, because we have lost our life. Because we have forsaken lands and possessions and fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, we have the life of Christ within us working out into the lives around us. If it is not that, if it is just principles, then there will be problems. There will even be disasters in relationships and other circumstances. We are in a safe environment where we can clean up after each other. We are in a caravan where the car right behind you has a dustpan and a broom for whatever you might happen to do when you run through the intersection. We are caring for each other and helping each other with these things.

But I just want you to know that if you, yourself, are going to have life within, and it is not going to be some awkward, frustrating battle of applying principles and always messing something up and nobodys ever satisfied and that sort of stuff that’s going on inside of you. If it’s ever going to be something other than that, there has to be a deep humility. There has to be a hunger and a teachable heart. There has to be a willingness to suffer indignation and a willingness to walk the way of the cross and to allow Jesus, Himself, to send an angel with a coal from the altar to burn your lips…to teach you how to lose your life, since we are not capable, really, of even doing that on our own. He will teach us obedience by the things we suffer, and those that have suffered in the flesh can learn to be done with sin. But we have to be willing to face that and to welcome the angel with that burning coal, rather than run from him and scream bloody murder. “Oh, Christianity shouldn’t be like that. We are all supposed to be joyful.” Well, yeah, but there is a kind of joy that transcends understanding, that is inexpressible and full of glory. There is a kind of joy that comes as the scriptures say, the refreshing that comes from repentance. He came to bless us by turning us from our wickedness. There is a kind of joy that comes from having faced the coal from the altar and now being finally set free from our unclean lips and our bumbling, faulty cornering that wearies us, as well as everybody around us. It is supernatural, but we have to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord in our lives.