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Spirit Walk by David NelsonPosted: 2007-02-28 22:46:22 Chapter 3 Spirit Walk (from the book Desiring One Thing) Mary, in this situation in Luke 10, where she sat at the feet of Jesus, was this the right spiritual decision? Was Martha’s decision fleshly? Martha thought her decision was right, because it made more sense to her. It seemed more reasonable than Mary’s decision; because Mary wasn’t helping with the meal. Martha felt like the right thing for Mary to do was to help her with the meal. When you have a big project to do everybody should help and pitch in, but Jesus said to her, Mary has made the right decision—and it was a spiritual decision and Martha has made the wrong decision. Jesus said, “You are anxious and concerned and worried about many things but there is only ONE THING that is needful.” The ONE THING is to find out what the mind of the Lord is and to find out what the will of the Spirit is and to walk in the Spirit. It can be a very smooth thing that is almost like second nature, instead of being so cumbersome and you are always worried about what to do and overly concerned, “Am I walking in the Spirit, am I not?” It will become more of a second nature thing. It says in Walking after the Spirit should become as natural as when you go out for a walk, you do not concentrate on how to walk. You don’t think, well, I’ve got to move this foot and I’ve got to move it for exactly so many seconds and then put my foot down and then I’ve got to move the other foot and I’ve got to move it this far. Otherwise, you would be jerking around down the street trying to negotiate each step. When you walk, you already know how to walk. A newborn baby doesn’t know how to walk. They do not know how to balance themselves, if they walk too fast forward, they fall down or if they lean too far forward they may lose their equilibrium, or if they move too fast this way or that way, they start to fall. They are learning by trial and error how to walk. Once you learn how to walk, it is like riding a bike, it becomes second nature. So too, walking in the Spirit will become second nature to us because we will know the voice of God better and better. In Romans 8:5 it says, “They that are after the flesh (carnal) do mind the things of the flesh but they that are after the Spirit do mind the things of the Spirit.” This doesn’t necessarily mean “flesh,” meaning evil. It just means that you are minded toward your own thoughts, your own reason, I’m going to go do this, I’m going to go do that, I’m going to go play tennis, I’m going to go watch TV, I’m going to go shopping, and you have not the mind of always giving everything to the Spirit and saying, “What do You want me to do?” Or “Do you REALLY want me to go there?” But, it will become second nature that God will always know that you want to do His will and that you are always putting everything before the Lord and, like second nature, giving things up to the Lord about what do you want me to do, what is Your will? He wants to guide us in an effortless kind of walk. Now, at times, you won’t know what you are supposed to do. You won’t know what the will of the Spirit is, but you will just have to trust that God is going to guide your feet and guide your way. It says in In Rom. 8:13 it says, “If you live after the flesh (continually) you will die but, if through the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you shall live, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” We want to be led by the Spirit of God. We want to be children of God. We want to be sons of God. We want to have the flesh phased out of our lives and put the flesh to death and we want to do what is spiritual. It says in Luke 10:38, “Now, it came to pass, as they went, they entered into a certain village, and a certain woman, named Martha, received Jesus into her house (I’m sure the other disciples were there also). She had a sister named Mary who went and sat at Jesus’ feet to hear his word. So, picture Jesus coming into the house, in the living room, and Mary is focused on sitting at Jesus’ feet and hearing what he has to say. He might have been ready to share something with everyone and she was ready to hear and wanted to hear, and she may have known that Martha was out in the kitchen making a meal. She could have said to herself, “Well, it makes sense to say to Jesus, Martha is out in the kitchen making a meal and I sure think I should go help her or she is going to be mad at me,” and she might feel a strong, social pressure to go to the kitchen. But in another way, she didn’t care what anybody thought. She just became focused towards Jesus and she wanted to hear what he had to say, and he was wanting to speak. In other words, Jesus had the unction to speak and she had the desire and unction to be right there and hear it. Martha was encumbered with much business and serving and busy-ness in the kitchen. Martha came to Jesus and said, even in a somewhat rebuking way, “Do you not care, Jesus, that my sister has left me to serve alone.” This is a big job and I need help. Tell her, “bid her to come and help me.” In other words, Jesus, you know what is reasonable, tell Mary that she shouldn’t be doing this (sitting at your feet), she should be helping me. Jesus said to Martha, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful and Mary has chosen that good part. Mary has heard the voice of the Spirit and has chosen to follow the Spirit. Mary was in the right place at the right moment, hearing that the Spirit was bidding her to come. Jesus was bidding her to come. She in her heart was coming and obeying the voice of the Spirit to do the one thing that is always needful. This also is as we have read in Deuteronomy 8. It is more important than food or clothing, it is to seek the In Romans 8 there is a division between what is spiritual and what is fleshly and we want to become more spiritual and less fleshly. Spirit is a pure thing. Mixture of Spirit and flesh is an impure thing. It is like this, if you were in a church service and someone got up to sing a song and they were singing full of pride and they were not close to the Lord and they had very shallow prayer lives; now, God could bless that song in spite of the person singing it, in spite of their pride, in spite of their shallow prayer life, in spite of their worldly life when they leave the church building. It doesn’t mean that they are not a Christian, but they are at least a carnal Christian. The song isn’t going to have a spiritual anointing unless God comes in and supersedes, and says in spite of this person, I want to bless these people out there in the congregation. So, I’m going to take what is coming out of their mouth and I’m going to bless it and touch these people’s lives. But in most cases God wants true spiritual anointing to come from spiritual people. An anointing comes from their sermons, from their messages, from their singing, from their sharing, from their walk with the Lord, from just them being with them at a supper table. There is an anointing from people who are close to God, who walk spiritual lives, and who don’t walk fleshly lives. Yes, God can use you in spite of your weaknesses. You might be the weakest, most fleshly, most carnal Christian, but He can take you in a moment in time and just use you to help somebody else. But, you can’t say that it was you—you just have to say God must have helped me, when the words seemed to flow out of your mouth—that was the grace of God through you. If you walk a more spiritual walk and you walk more in tune with God, you will have an anointing that will be unmistakable, it will be more sure. It will not be you, but it will be because the presence of God is with you and in you and flows through you, because it has a more unhampered ability to flow through people who have been walking with God and walking in prayer and know the voice of God and who try to follow the voice of God and who are tender to know God. In II Thess 2:9 & 10 it says, “Even him who is coming, who is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders…” This is the antichrist. This is the one who is working after the power of Satan, who is going to come with power and signs and lying wonders. “He is coming with all deceivableness of unrighteousness, in them that are going to perish, because they received not, or embraced not, the love of the truth that they might be saved.” These truths that I am sharing and that other people are sharing also and that many people all over the world are sharing are truths that God is giving us at this time that we need to embrace to come closer to what He wants, to be separated from Babylon, to be separated from the sins of Babylon, to be separated from the mentality of Babylon, to come out of Babylon and to be separate. What is now being taught needs to be embraced to the point where you have a better relationship with the Lord and you say, “I must have a closer walk with the Lord.” “I must have a better relationship with the Lord. “I must hear things more clearly and purely.” “I must hear this truth so that it will change me. This is the way to be in tune with the Spirit; to have the flesh decrease and to not stay carnal, to not stay weak, to not stay envying and striving in worldly pursuits and everything that has to do with seeking after the world, after food and clothing, and the mentality of always being busy. Even Martha thought she was making the right choice, but it wasn’t the spiritual choice. I am not saying that everything is to be “so spiritual”; meaning getting down on your knees, and getting in a quiet room, or getting in your closet, everything is always “spiritual” in that way, Sometimes the Lord wants us to go talk with somebody. Sometimes he wants us to go play tennis with somebody. Sometimes we are to do something that doesn’t seem very spiritual but it is what God wants us to do. In that moment, you have to know that THIS is what the Spirit of the Lord wants me to do. The Spirit of the Lord does want me to fix a meal at this time. It IS His will and it is going to be the perfect time to do it. But then, you have to know, just like the verses in Proverbs 26:4-5 set forth, you have to know when to NOT DO one thing and when to DO another thing, when to rebuke a fool, when not to rebuke a fool, when to fix a dinner, when not to fix a dinner, when is it God’s will to fix a dinner, then Martha would have been in God’s will. When is it God’s will to push away everything and come and sit at His feet? You have to know. So, this truth that is coming into the Body of Christ is calling us back to what God wants us to be, closer to Him, walking in the Spirit. In the last chapter (Fire), we shared from Malachi 4:5 & 6 which say, “In the last days, Elijah will come and he will turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers….” What God is doing right now is restoring to the Church the character, the holiness, the purity, the desire, the hunger, the righteousness, all the holiness that He has ever wanted for His Church. He is restoring His Bride. He is cleaning-up His Bride. He is getting His Bride ready and He is getting the heart of His Bride ready. The heart of the Bride is going to be as the Father’s heart. Those who are getting the Father’s heart, their hearts are going to begin to turn toward the children, even the children of God in the Church and their own children. They are going to turn toward the children, the ones who are unknowing or who don’t know the right way and they are going to have the Father’s heart toward the children. Through their persistent love and their persistent anointing and the love that never fails, that has been produced and restored into their hearts, they will turn the hearts of the children back to the heart of the Father. Actually, since the Father is the author of all of this and he is putting His heart into his Bride, when the children turn back to what God is wanting and people are interceding and loving and having the understanding of holiness and the beauty and the forgiveness of God, they will turn not just the hearts of the children back to the human fathers but they will be turning them back to the Father himself, because they will be creating in the children the Father’s heart also. Everything will be brought together; the Father, the Bride, the Son, and even more people will become part of the Bride. This is actually what is happening in Malachi 4 and when it began to happen, it happened with John the Baptist when he came in the Spirit of Elijah and Jesus was on the earth and Jesus was bringing everything together to show them the Father’s heart and to bring them to the place where they would have the Father’s heart and then they would turn others, as they were changed. All of this is going to be seen in future chapters as to what kind of character he is creating in us and how it is going to be us who will turn the people back to God and back to what God wants. As it says in II Thess. 2:10, we need to embrace the truth, we need to love the truth, we need to hear it, we need to let it transform us and it will save us, but verse 11 says, because of the deception of Satan and the deception of the anti-Christ and the deception of the world getting worse while God is changing His Church, His Bride, to be more holy, this is causing a separating. The world is getting worse and the Bride is getting closer and the true Church is getting closer to what God wants and we are pulling away from all of this garbage and insanity and, yet, not really pulling away from the people and separating from the people, we are still going to be connected with the people, because God wants us to love them we will try to work to help them to see. But even that will cause more of a separating, the people who are really close to God are going to look even more ridiculous to some people but to other people they are going to be as the savor (or fragrance) of Christ. For some, they are going to say, this looks good, this looks right and I don’t understand it and I want to fight it, but at the same time I am attracted to it. But others are going to hate it so much, just like some who hated Christ and some who were attracted to Him. That is what the difference has to be. The difference in us has to be so great, such a great anointing, that people will either hate us or love us and we have to be able to cause a shaking because of who we are. This will be a separating and this pulling apart, again, not meaning that we are going to pull apart from people and not want to be with them. Just like Jesus was worlds apart in what he was, he wasn’t worlds apart from the people. He was with them, but yet he was awesome in his difference. He says, “I never do anything of my own initiative, I only do what I hear the Father say, what I see the Father do,” and that is what he wanted to teach us to do, have that purity of walk. As this separating is happening, the world is getting worse and cold and distrustful and betraying one another and hating one another and sneaky with each other; the Church is not going to become that way. The Church is going to become more loving, more transparent, more without guile. For this cause, it says in II Thess. 2:11, that God is going to send a strong delusion upon those who continue to harden themselves to the truth. They will hear it. They will see it. God wants us to be out there, to be touching people’s lives, and they see it but they keep hardening themselves to it. So, he is going to make them believe a lie. They are going to be hardened into believing a lie, so that all might be condemned who did not believe the truth, who did not receive the truth, who did not love the truth, who did not embrace the truth, but they had pleasure in their unrighteousness, and they wanted to stay in their pleasures, stay in their flesh, a leave me alone attitude, and they will get harder and harder and harder, and that is what will happen in the separating between people becoming harder to the things of God and others becoming softer to the things of God. People will become closer to God or they will become more hateful of what God is doing. In Rev 3:13 we have the 7th and last church, So, he who has an ear, tune your ear to hear what the Spirit is saying and the angel is saying to the Church of the Laodiceans, “I know your works. I know that you are neither hot not cold. In other words, you are not freezing cold and I have come to you and you say, “Hey, I haven’t been reading my bible, I haven’t been praying, I haven’t been going to church, I am dead cold; I’m not even thinking about God, I don’t have anything to do with God, I am just living my life, leave me alone.” That would be pretty cold, wouldn’t it? To be hot would be, I’m trying to follow everything the Lord is saying, my heart is zealous, and I feel fire in me and I want to be on-fire and other people say about me, “You are on-fire.” If you are lukewarm, you are not really hot and you are not really cold. Jesus said, I would rather have you be cold or hot, rather than lukewarm. He says, if you stay lukewarm I will spew you out of my mouth; I am sick in my stomach. I feel nauseated, but yet I am holding it down, but there is only so long that you can hold down something when you are nauseated. Eventually, it is not good what is in your stomach and it is better that it come out. He says, I will spew you out, but I am waiting for you to either be cold and say, “I don’t want to hear God anymore, I’m just going to get involved in the world again, and I’m just going to go down this route of hating the ones who are close to God and hating the things of God and being deceived, “And a strong delusion is going to come upon these and they are going to believe a lie and they will be deceived and they won’t want to hear what God is saying and they’ll just stay in Babylon and they will be destroyed with Babylon. Or, the Lord is waiting for you to hear His voice, warning, warning, warning, when you hear His voice, hear what the Spirit is saying, and become not half flesh and half Spirit but more Spirit, more Spirit, more Spirit, because those who are of the flesh cannot please God and God doesn’t want the mixture any more. Just like if you were to go into the Holy of Holies. If you said, well, for 9 days I’ve been coming in and burning the incense the way God wanted me to do and on this 10th day I’m just going to come in and burn the incense in a different way because, I just don’t feel like following everything He says all the time. If you were a priest and went into the Holy of Holies, and you did things your own way, you may die in the Holy of Holies; because in the Holy of Holies God says, people can’t come in with wrong hearts or just doing things the way they want. Even the good-intentioned man who saw the ark of the Covenant falling, because it was being carried on a cart and one of the wheels might have hit a hole and the cart began to tip, and he went up to steady the ark and he touched it, and he died. Didn’t he have good intentions? Well, here is the problem, God told them never to carry the ark the way THEY decided. Aah, we’ll carry it on a cart, aah, we’ll put it in a truck, aah, we’ll put it in our pick-up. NO, He said carry it on poles. That way, if six people are carrying it with poles, if one person’s foot goes in a hole and he twists his ankle, the others can still carry it or it won’t fall because they are carrying it the way God told them to carry it. And, He also said, NO ONE is to touch My ark except the ones that I have assigned. If you decide that you are going to do it your own way, you are probably going to die. That is why Ananias and Sapphira, died in the book of Acts because the Church was so red-hot and so close to God, that you just didn’t bring lies and sin into the camp. Somebody is going to die. If God knows that his church is so far away from him, so fleshly, so 90% flesh and 10% God or 5% God, he says that you have come to a place of such looseness that you think that what you are doing is OK, but it is not acceptable to God any more, and God is going to get us back to the place where what we do is acceptable again, the way He wants it to be. But if we are so lukewarm or we are so far away from God, and we think we can make so many exceptions to God’s ways, God will say, “You don’t have the right heart. You have got to have a heart that is sensitive, that wants to do my will.” In Rev. 3:17 it says, “Because you say you are rich, and you say you are increased with good, and you say that you have need of nothing and you don’t even know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, naked.” The church is thinking that it is alright. The church is thinking that it is rich, has increased in goods, has need of nothing, and is pleasing in the eyes of the Lord, that it is acceptable to the Lord and the Lord says that it is not acceptable, and the Bride now is beginning to really see and feel the things of God and is beginning to seek God, and is beginning to see that things are not right, and we are not satisfied, and the feelings that we have inside, a dissatisfaction and that something is missing, and that all this really isn’t the Spirit of God, this song really isn’t anointed, this sermon isn’t really from the throne of God. Where is the pure voice of God? I see mixture, I see flesh, and I see Spirit in the Church. I see a little Spirit here and then a lot of flesh over here and it is NOT acceptable to the Lord, this mixture. The Bride and the people who are seeking God and the people who are dissatisfied who are wanting more and who are hungry for more, are starting to see that what used to satisfy them, was really man-made, and it does not satisfy them anymore. God is saying, this is man-made stuff, it is flesh and it fights against my Spirit and it does not please me and it is not going to accomplish my will because it is full of flesh. God is saying, I want you to be able to discern what is flesh and what is Spirit and I want you to hear My voice more clearly and, pretty soon, you will see that the Church, that thinks it is so rich and so increased in goods, is wretched, miserable, poor, blind, naked, a desolation, a burned-up city, flat on the ground. If you read Isaiah Chapter 1, you would see a prophetic indictment of the people of God, no matter how much they raise their hands, no matter how much they pray, no matter how much they sing, no matter how many services they have, no matter how many revivals they have, that it is not acceptable to God, it is not pleasing to God. He is sick of it. He is tired of it. In the next chapter we will go to Matthew chapters 21, 22 and 23 to see how the Lord wants to correct His Church. He is wanting to show them their nakedness and what we will need to clothe ourselves. (Of course we are to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ and none of our own works, but when it says in Rev.3:18 that the Laodicean church needed white garments to clothe themselves the Lord also requires of us “spiritual clothing.”) We are not to clothe ourselves in fleshly church shows and fleshly church conferences, but we are to clothe ourselves in spiritual things. Also, how can we seek the Lord together, corporately, to find corporate revival? In these first few chapters we are seeing better how to find personal revival but our goal also is how to find corporate revival through seeking him together. We should come to a church service with no agenda, not making up our own agenda and not keeping the ball rolling or keeping the plates spinning with our own ideas until God shows up. It should be like this, if He doesn’t show up, we are not going to know what to do and the meeting is going to be broken until he fixes it and if he doesn’t fix it, it is just going to remain broken. We have to seek God’s way. He wants to crash our parties and create His party, and to do that will take a dying to self and a dying to being embarrassed, looking at each other and not being sure what to do next. It takes a seeking of the Lord, it takes putting aside everything to find out what the Lord wants to do corporately. This gold tried in fire is like pure gold, refined 7 times in the fire and the white raiment is pure spiritual things, pure spiritual prayer, real intercession, a real spirit of travailing that comes from God and if it doesn’t come from God then it is not real. A real season of music that is orchestrated by God that has to do with the ebb and the flow of how God wants to bring music in and not 3 fast songs and 3 slow songs but spiritual songs and spiritual orchestrations of what God wants to do and if he doesn’t even want music in an evening, you do not have to say, well, we have to put in our little music because music is always part of what we do. What does God want? In the |