Simplicity – Manifesting Jesus

Bible Reading (May 14)

• 2 Sam 9-10
• Psalm 67 
• 1 Corinthians 2

What Spiritual Gift is God giving me for my growth today, that I can share with others? (Rom 1:11)

God’s gift to us, God’s Spirit who knows God’s thoughts

1 Cor 2:10-12 But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.

How often have we wanted to know the mind of God? How often have we complained about what God is doing and why? Just like the only mind we can read is our own, so too, the only mind that can read God’s thoughts is His mind. But, this verse tells us that God has given us His mind. We have a part of Him living in us! The Holy Spirit, His divine nature (2 Peter 1:5), which knows God’s thoughts!  

This gives a new twist to “Walk in the Spirit, and you WILL NOT fulfil the desires of the flesh.” (Gal 5:16). When we walk in step with God’s Spirit living in us, we will be living in step (Gal 5:25) with the mind of Christ, not according to our own mind (Rom 8:9)!  

What encouraged me in my faith? (Rom 1:12)

I love the story of Mephibosheth (2 Sam 9:7-8). It’s such a beautiful picture of God’s complete unmerited favor. The grandson of Saul, the son of Jonathan, in honor of David’s relationship to Jonathan, he bequeaths all of Saul’s property to him, and invites him to dine with the king, like a son. This is a beautiful picture of how God treats us. We are God’s enemies, yet in His love, He gave us an inheritance (1 Peter 1:4), and invites us to sit at his table!

What spiritual fruit does God want to work in me? What can I share with others that God can use to produce fruit among them also? (Rom 1:13)

Oswald Chambers said this morning, “It is not a question of being saved from hell, but of being saved in order to manifest the life of the Son of God in our mortal flesh.” Then he asked, “Do I manifest the essential sweetness of the Son of God, or the essential irritation of ‘myself’ apart from Him? The only thing that will enable me to enjoy the disagreeable is the keen enthusiasm of letting the life of the Son of God manifest itself in me. Our circumstances are the means of manifesting how wonderfully perfect and extraordinarily pure the Son of God is. …If God puts you there, He is amply sufficient.”

In Psalm 67:2 David said, “May your ways be known throughout the earth, your saving power among people everywhere.” Psalm 67:7 Yes, God will bless us, and people all over the world will fear him.”

The only way this happens is when, instead of complaining about our circumstances, and the events that happen to us, we look at them as “the means of manifesting Jesus.”  

Paul described how he lived that way in 1 Cor 2:2-5

• 1 Cor 2:2 For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified.
• 1 Cor 2:4-5 I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit. 5 I did this so you would trust not in human wisdom but in the power of God

In our orientation program, we call this simplicity. Being singularly focused! Forgetting everything else, all my agendas and all my desires, all the things that get my dander up, and focus singularly on displaying and manifesting Jesus above everything else. The only way we can do that is by the power of the Holy Spirit living in us, and dependence on Him.

If I live like the world, respond like the world, act like the world, what am I showing / displaying, that will make them want anything different?