Rabbi Schneider - Learn How to Please God

Hear now beloved one the word of God and look for application for you, because the Holy Spirit is living. "Even as the Holy Spirit moved over the surface of the waters," as we read in the book of Bereshit, Genesis chapter 1 verse 1, "He is still constantly moving over His creation". In fact the scriptures say that, "The eyes of the Lord are looking to and fro across the earth looking for someone that will be wholly devoted to Him". So understand as you and I get into God's word today, God is watching us, cause He's given us free choice. And He's looking for somebody that will sanctify their heart to Him in the Holy Spirit, so that He can deposit in that one that which He wants to give from the riches of His grace.

So get ready now and be prepared for the Holy Spirit to reveal something new and fresh to you. Hear the word of God. "For this reason also, since the day we heard of it we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding". And that's what I focused on last episode. And I want to just take a few more minutes before we move on to the next verse, because I think that often times we go over scriptures and we just move over them so quickly and we don't really look for some of the deeper understanding and the deeper revelation of what God is really trying to communicate to us through the Word of God. Remember He said, "The Word of God is living".

And the very nature of life as it keeps on breathing out newness, it keeps going deeper and further. There's always fresh revelation that you can receive, even from a scripture as you know, that you have known in the past. And all of a sudden you've read a scripture, you've read it twenty, thirty times before and all of a sudden it's preached one day or you read it one day and a whole new level of revelation has opened up. So God's gonna do that for you today as we're in His word together. I want to concentrate on this concept of awareness. Listen what Paul is saying. "I'm praying that you would be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding".

Now let me ask you, if you are crowned with wisdom and if you're crowned with understanding and if you're crowned with the knowledge of His will, which is what Paul was praying for here, doesn't that mean you have a certain level of awareness? In other words, that you would have an awareness of reality of the way to walk. You have an awareness that allows you to move forward in the light. And the reason that I'm focusing on this concept of awareness now is because one of the things that's happening so quickly in society today is that mankind is losing his sense of awareness, because he's become so distracted on materialism and so drawn out of himself in to the age of modern technology.

If you and I are gonna find God in the deepest way, if we're gonna find Him in a deep way, in a deeper way so that rivers of living water can well up through us, we're gonna have to spend time disconnected from the world alone with God; spending time just looking to Him, meditating, praying to Him, talking to Him, so that He can develop within us the sense of spiritual wisdom and understanding and the knowledge of His will. Cause if we don't stop and take time to develop a space between the Lord and ourselves where there's nothing distracting us, we're gonna go through life beloved, and our oars are only going to be three inches deep in the water. Remember we read the story in the scripture from the Prophet of Old. He began to walk in the water. And at first he put his foot in the water, in the book of Ezekiel and his toe touched the water. But then he kept on walking in deeper into the water and pretty soon as he was walking, had walked in deeper, the water had risen to his ankles. And he kept going forward, the vision that Ezekiel saw and the water came to his knees. And as he kept going the water eventually came all the way up and overflowed and he saw that the water gave life to everything.

The point is beloved, what would you and I do with our lives? Would we waste it pursuing the things of the world or would we develop within ourselves the capacity to receive the deep things of God and like Ezekiel's vision, keep going deeper into the water of God's Spirit? You see I know in my life and for many of you we realize that the things of the world cannot satisfy, that there is no life in the things of the world. Eventually what people have to realize is that true lasting, divine satisfaction and joy come from entering into the depths of the Spirit. So once again tying this up, Paul begins by praying that we'd be filled with all the wisdom and knowledge and understanding that's necessary for us to know God. And if you and I are gonna develop this it's gonna take discipline, it's gonna take work, it's gonna take, we call it in Hebrew kavanah, focus. We're gonna have to make it our intent above all else to develop our relationship with HaShem.

HaShem is just a Hebrew way of saying God. Ha means the, shem means name. So when we say HaShem, we're speaking of the name, because God He has no beginning, He has no end. He's beyond fully knowing, because He's greater than we are. I mean don't misunderstand, we know Him and we'll know Him in the depths of our being, but we'll never know all that He is, because He's unlimited. God is unlimited, that's why the angels in heaven in Isaiah 6, they keep on falling before the throne of the Lord, "Holy, Holy, Holy". And the reason that they're doing that is because they keep on getting hit with the new wave of God's glory. And every time they get hit with a new wave of His glory it overwhelms them, it's so fresh, it's a brand new thing. God is always a brand new thing. He's eternal life. And so I'm trying to encourage us today once again to think in the spirit, that the things that we see are just, are just temporal.

But if we pursue the things of the spirit, if we understand that God was manifested in the flesh as Yeshua and that His purpose is to bring us into the realm of the Spirit, not just stay in the flesh, not to worship images, not to worship you know doctrine, not to worship our own church culture, not to worship the Christian culture, but to pursue God, to go beyond the culture that we're living in; Even if you're a solid Christian in the church God wants to bring you like Abraham, into a new place. Where's the new place? It's a new place in Him. And there's always a new place on Him. We're on a voyage. We're on a journey and we're continually gonna go deeper into the realms of the Spirit, into eternal life, as we put Him first. Leave everything else behind to keep on pursuing Him, to gain all the wisdom and knowledge and spiritual understanding that's necessary for us to truly beloved, know God and to know eternal life.

Let me ask you a question though. Do you ever feel, I know I have a big burden in my life. I say often times, I say, "Lord cleanse me of all religiosity". I say, "Lord cleanse me of every religious thing that I'm doing, every religious thing that I'm saying that's just baggage". In other words, I think that the way that people walk today as Christians sometimes, it doesn't fully look like the way that Jesus walked. In other words, we have this Christianese language that we say sometimes. You know? A lot of people say the word amen and it's just a filler language. When they say it, it's just a, they say it out of nervous energy or they just say it to fill the space and we just, we have all these religious terms that we say. And it's just like Lord cleanse me of all that. I don't want to be bound by my culture. I don't want to be bound by the flesh. I don't want to be bound by churchianity. I want to enter into the Spirit. I want to know you Jesus in Spirit and in truth, even as Jesus said, He said, "Those that worship the Father will worship Him in Spirit and in truth".

So let's continue on, wisdom and understanding. What do we need to do? We need to leave where we're at. We need to be willing to be like Abraham. Wherever you're comfortable in your life right now, you need to be willing to let that go, to move out where the Spirit is leading you to enter deeper into God. And as we do we're gonna gain more knowledge of His will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Now Paul says that this goal of wisdom and understanding, he says is that, "We would walk," in verse 10, "In a manner worthy of the Lord". This is something else that is in the way in our lives. We want to own our lives. We want to be able to choose what we want. We'll let God in, in some areas. We'll give God control in some areas, but some so often times we reserve other areas as kind of off limits for God. "Lord I'll yield to You here, but don't talk to me about what's going on in this part of my life".

As long as we have those constricts, as long as we keep those boundaries between the Holy Spirit and ourselves, we're never gonna be able to go as deep into God as He's drawing us into. Because our rebellions, our refusal, our fear, our stubbornness, our saying no to Him, will keep us from being able to flow with the Ruach Hakodesh, with the Holy Spirit into the depths of His heart. So Paul says, "I want you to have spiritual wisdom and understanding in the knowledge of His will". And then he says in verse 10, "So that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all respects".

In other words, the goal for you and I is to please the Lord. If we, if we're keeping control, if we're keeping possession, if we're unwilling to yield and let go we're never gonna get to where we want to be and most importantly to where God wants us to be. We have to come to the place by the grace of God, beloved one, when we recognize that we have no choice. We're not our own. The Bible says, "We don't belong to ourselves. We belong to King Yeshua, to Jesus that died and rose on our behalf". Therefore we need to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

The point is, is that until you and I by the grace of HaShem, by the grace of God, come to a place in our life where our will is surrendered to Him, that the focus and the aim and the goal of our life is to please Him, where we've let go of all the things that we've hung on to that we didn't want to surrender to Him, until we get to that place we're never gonna be able to fly and swim in the Holy Spirit, in the rivers of living water, in the deep places of eternal life. And so again, there's a challenge here for us and if you look around you'd know that it's true. You see it in the culture and it's true in your own heart in some areas, even as it is mine. Areas in our life that we're not willing to let go of and surrender to God. Maybe it's because of fear. Maybe we just don't trust Him with something. We don't trust Him with our finances, we don't trust Him with our health, maybe we don't trust Him with our, whatever it is we need to trust God. We need to let go. We need to believe:

God I believe that You are and I believe that You're so intimately involved in my life, You're closer to me than my own breath, that Your very Spirit is sustaining every cell of my body, that I was conceived in You, that You're the one that brought me forth, that You're loving taking care of me every day of my life. I believe that You're real. I believe that You love me. I believe that You're taking care of me, that You want the best for me. So Father I'm gonna trust You with everything. I'm gonna let go of everything. No matter what happens I'm gonna trust You.

You know I was just on a trip recently and I was driving down this road that the potholes in the road were this deep and not only were the potholes this deep, but then you had boulders where there weren't potholes that were this high. So I'm driving down this road and I thought and there's no one int this area, in the middle of Colorado. And I'm thinking, "Man this would be a scary place to get a flat tire. What would I do"? Well you know what happened? Sure enough in the middle of the road I got a flat tire. But you know what I did when I got a flat tire? I said, "Baruch HaShem," which is Hebrew for bless the Lord.

Father I receive this from Your hands. I believe Father God that everything is from You or You're causing everything to work for good. That no matter what happens to me You're gonna cause it to work for good and that a lot of things that happen to me that I don't even think are You actually are You, because You got a purpose in mind that's bigger than I can see. It might be concealed right now, but You've got a purpose of light to bring forth from it.

So here I was alone on the road in a rental car, had to find everything you know? I was missing even a part of the jack, but I just said you know, "Baruch HaShem, bless the Lord. Father You're with me". There's a purpose in this. I'm gonna give You glory in this. I'm gonna thank You for this, because the Bible says, "Give thanks to God in all things, for this is His will for you in Christ Jesus. So Father I'm gonna rejoice right now, believe You're doing something good from it". That's the way, beloved, God wants you and I to live our lives. This is part of having the wisdom and understanding that we need, that Paul speaks of in verse 9, to walk in His will and to please Him. So you see I had the wisdom and the understanding to recognize that all things come from HaShem, come from God and at the very least He can use all things for good, so to thank Him for all things according to the Word of God. I had that wisdom. I had that understanding. So when it got time to change that flat tire I was able to give Him thanks in a difficult situation, thereby pleasing Him.

So listen how we put it together again. Paul says, "For this reason," in verse number 9, "Since the day we heard of it we have not ceased to pray for you and ask that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding". So I had the wisdom and understanding to understand that everything comes from God or at the very least He can use all things to cause good to come forth from it. Even the world was birthed out of darkness, right? There was darkness before there was a world. So everything that we go through, the times that seem full of light and the times that have darkness, we can thank God knowing He brings forth light from them. So then I thanked Him and you know what I was able to do in that process beloved? I was able to bring joy to His heart, because I trusted Him. So with the wisdom and the understanding we're able to walk in His will and in walking in His will we're able to please Him in all respects.