Rabbi Schneider - Are You Limiting God?
Beloved, I want you to understand me. Paul understood things that most of us don't understand. Paul was walking in a way that he had revelation from above and the revelation that he had, he's trying to communicate to you and I. But in order to receive the revelation we've got to stop thinking in the flesh and we got to recognize that the Jesus that God wants us to know is so much bigger than the Jesus that we do know. Too many of us have a conception of Yeshua, we have a conception of Christianity that is so limited. And if we don't let go of where we are to move on to where God wants us to be, we're never gonna enter in to the deep waters. I want you to understand beloved, we cannot be in the flesh, we have to walk in the spirit.
Now as I say that, I want to go now and begin once again this review, by picking up at the first verse of this prayer, verse number 9. Paul says this, "For this reason also since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding". Now the challenge if you've been with me in this series, that I began with in this verse, was simply the challenge to become more, to become less selfish and more focused on being a blessing to other people. It struck me when I read this that Paul said here, "I'm praying for you," he said. "I have not ceased to pray for you".
I know that the Holy Spirit challenged me not long ago in terms of how much was I just thinking about doing things for other people? Don't misunderstand beloved, I care about people. I love people. But the Holy Spirit was calling me up to a new level. And you know as a result of that challenge I've begun to try to focus more just on blessing people, just on doing things for people, even when they're not asking me to. I want to challenge you right now, if you want to walk in a fuller measure of God's Spirit, you've got to become less self centered and more of a giver. Paul you can see his tremendous heart here of giving. He said he had not ceased praying for this church that he was birthing.
Let's continue on. Once again, "For this reason also," Paul said, "since the day we heard of it". He heard of the faith of these saints in Colosse. "We have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding". And I focused here on these last few words here, a knowledge of His will, having spiritual wisdom and understanding. I focused there beloved ones, on the crown of the mind. The Bible says, "As a man thinketh so he is". So what we need to learn how to do, is to balance all the impulses, all the spiritual energies, all the tribulations, everything that we go through in life, everything that we feel has to flow through, listen, the mind. And the mind has to be girded, number one, with the knowledge of God's will that comes first of all through the scriptures, then through the training of the Holy Spirit.
Then we need to have spiritual wisdom, which is a supernatural gifting. Listen, wisdom's a gift. Where do you get wisdom? You can't just get wisdom from the natural world. It's a gift of the Spirit that gives us insight, deep insight as to how to walk, how to manage everything, how to apply knowledge. Paul says, "I want you to have a knowledge of God's will, spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will be able to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord". One of the unique features of Judaism that comes out of the Jewish tradition is the concept of the mind. Meaning that Jewish people are a people that place a lot of emphasis on regulating their life, not through their impulses, but through their mind; having wisdom, letting the mind be in control, thinking with your mind rather than your impulses, being ruled by your mind rather than your feelings.
Now there's a place for feelings absolutely, but if our feelings control us rather than being ruled by a knowledge of God's will, wisdom and revelation, features of the mind; if our feelings control us we're gonna fall on our face. We're gonna get shipwrecked. We're gonna go astray. We're gonna chase after illusions. We're gonna go chasing one feeling and then we're gonna chase another feeling, then we're gonna chase another feeling and then we're gonna get to the end of our lives and we're gonna see behind us a trail of destruction. Feelings are good, but if they're not filtered through the mind, that has a knowledge of God's will, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, we are not gonna become spiritually strong and we're not gonna grow in the stature of Messiah Yeshua.
So I want to encourage you, don't be led around by your feelings, but understand that God wants to lead you through the wisdom He gives you in your mind. And in walking according to this wisdom, Paul tells us we'll be able to walk in a manner, verse number 10, "worthy of the Lord". And I think this is critical that you stop for a second here, when we ask our self, "What am I really trying to do with my life? What is my goal? When I wake up in the morning and I examine the trajectory of my heart, what is my motive for the day"? When I wake up in the morning and I think what is my ambition for the day? What am I trying to accomplish? What am I thinking about? What's in front of me? What's in the forefront? Are we really saying when we wake up in the morning, "Father God, my goal today is to walk in a manner worthy of You, to please You in all respects"?
You see many people that call themselves believers, they wake up in the morning, they believe that Jesus is the Messiah. They believe that Jesus died on the cross for their sins. But when they wake up in the morning, the first thing that many are thinking about beloved ones, is not how they can walk in a manner worthy of the Lord that day to please Him in all respects. They're just thinking about their job, they're thinking about doing this, they're thinking about doing that, they're thinking about their own pleasures sometimes and God is way in the background. But if you and I are gonna walk truly worthy of our calling, we have to understand that we are born again with the spirit of the living God, that we've been purchased by HaShem, which is the Hebrew way to say bless the name of the Lord. We've been purchased by Father God through His Son to live for Him, to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. So we need to reprogram our minds, so that we're not conformed to the old life, to the natural, or to this world. And we need to set our sights on why we're really here.
I want to challenge you beloved ones, even as Jesus was born to go to the cross and came to that cross and said, "Not my will, but thy will be done". Every morning you and I need to be waking up and recognizing we've got a mission to accomplish today. We've got to overcome today. Whatever obstacles we're gonna face today, we need to overcome them and walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. Every day there's gonna be battles and every day our purpose is to overcome those battles by the Spirit of the Lord and the Word of the Lord, with our affections set on Him, to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. Jesus said seven times in the book of Revelation, "He that overcomes will inherit these things". The more you overcome, the greater is gonna be a reward.
So let's continue on. Our purpose is to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to overcome, to please Him in all respects. And then Paul says that, "We would bear fruit in every good work". And I talked about bearing fruit is not just doing things that could be seen in the natural world. It's not just giving food to poor people. It's not just you know holding somebody's hand to cross the street. Of course these are just ideas that I'm conveying to help you understand that bearing good fruit has to do first of all, with what are you releasing by your spirit? Because you're first of all a spirit man, a spirit woman, you have been born again by the Spirit of God. You are first a spirit. Your body is just the encasement that host your spirit right now. You have to understand that you are a supernatural son or daughter of God and because you have the Spirit of God you have the power to bear fruit in the spirit world. You can release peace by your words. You could release a blessing by your words.
When you speak words by the Spirit you can build up, but if you release words that come from your defiled spirit, the spirit of the world, you can tear down. You have power and God has given us His Spirit, listen now, to bear good works. Your presence, even carries with it the capacity to produce trust and love and peace and safety and a consciousness of God's presence in other people's lives if you carry yourself in the Spirit of God. So that wherever you go you're leaving an imprint in that atmosphere and the people that you have been with are changed for the better, because you're bearing good fruit by His Spirit. Let's think like spirit beings, we're spirit sons of God, spirit daughters of God. Jesus said those that worship must worship in spirit and in truth.
Let's continue on. He said, "That you would bear fruit in every good work and you would be increasing," he's saying here, "in the knowledge of God". Now I don't know about you, but for me I'm not content just to put my tent up in one place and stay there forever. God will give me something and I'll pursue what He's given me. I'll pray about it. I'll study. I'll walk in it. I'll discipline myself to apply it in my life and obey it. But eventually what's gonna happen is that revelation that He gave me is gonna begin to fade away and I'll need something new. I'll have a divine dissatisfaction. I'll need the next thing. And so Paul prays here that you would be, "Increasing in the knowledge of God".
I've got news for you beloved one, if you're the real deal you're not content to put your tent up and stay at that same place your whole life. You're gonna know, you're gonna have a heart beat to know there's something more, there's something beyond where you've been, there's spiritual realities that can take you beyond where you've been. I want you to know God is bigger and greater. He has more abundance for you, but you gotta be willing to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in your life to enter into those places. And sometimes it means that God's gonna lead you to places that none of your friends have been to before, none of your family's been to before. You're gonna begin to think things, do things, say things, because you're moving forward in God and you can't let your culture hold you back or you'll never enter in.
If you're at a place and you're saying, "Well I can't do that," because you're more concerned about being accepted by your friends and family then you are with following God, you'll never enter in. You gotta go where the Holy Spirit leads you. I'm not talking about physically, I'm talking about in your spirit. You gotta begin to go in the spirit where the Holy Spirit's leading. Just like Abraham who had to leave his place. He had to leave the land he was living in. He had to leave what was comfortable. He had to leave what was secure to follow HaShem, to follow the Lord, bless His name, into the Promised Land where God was taking him. Jesus said, "I have many more things to say to you now, but you cannot bear them". You are not ready for them yet. Don't you want to hear those things that Jesus said to the disciples in the Gospel of John they weren't ready to hear yet? Jesus wants to say something new to you. He wants to say something more to you. He has ever new revelation, but are you willing to put Him first and to put yourself in a posture where you say, "Lord I'm willing to go wherever You lead me". And you're willing to go there like Abraham, even alone.
Then Paul prays in verse 11, "That we'd be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience joyously". He's praying here that we'd be strengthened with the supernatural might of God's presence, so that we would be grounded. God wants to ground you and me so that we're steadfast, that we walk in peace continuously, that we hold our emotions, that we're steadfast, that we're not this way one day, this way another day, up one day, down the next day; but there's a steadfastness to our life. Yes feelings come and go. Some days we feel up. Some days we feel down, but despite that there's a steadfastness to the way we walk. And there's a patience in the way we handle life. We've learned how to not panic when things happen. We've learned how to not let go when it feels like we can't hold on. There's a steadfastness and a patience that has made us secure in the Lord. We've been secured by the grip of God.
Father I thank You right now for releasing strength into our lives that has produced patience and steadfastness. That Father even as You have laid a hold of us, we now have laid a hold of You.
And Paul says and this is going to produce in you, "a joyousness," he says at the end of verse 11, "joyously". There's gonna be a supernatural knowing that whatever is happening in your life, it's all working for good. And this is gonna give you joy. And finally we conclude today in the 12th verse, that the posture of our life, the characteristics gonna be that we'll be, "giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light".
Let's think about this once again. Final verse here. Verse 12, that the result of all that God has done is that we'll be "giving thanks to the Father," that we'll walk around thanking the Lord. We say in Hebrew, baruch HaShem, bless the Lord. Continually from our mouth is going to flow through praise, flow praise. It's gonna be, "To the Father, who has qualified you," and I beloved, "to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light". Beloved child of God, you and I have been called out of darkness into His marvelous light. We're on a great adventure. We're on a great journey. There's more and more to be discovered. God has plans for you that are beyond your wildest dreams, but you and I have to put Him first day by day and step by step to get there. I love you and Jesus loves you. God bless you.