Tag Archives: Perfect Our Love

The Bible Is The Means, Not The End

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - The Bible Is the Means, Not The End
Photo Courtesy of Ben Lockett – Flickr

There are many people who know the Bible well but don’t know our Lord at all.

That’s a trap that is easy to fall into, especially when we make the Bible like the bronze serpent that was given to lift people’s eyes upward to the Source of their salvation (Numbers 21:5-9), a foreshadowing of Christ (John 3:14), but instead they made it into an idol (2 Kings 18:4).

The Bible is like the frame to an interdimensional portal. Even though it’s beautifully constructed, its primary value is not its physical attributes –the words on the pages, but the bridge to another dimension that it facilitates.

From before time, the Father has purposed to establish means for you to be with Him (Matthew 25:34).

God is spirit (John 4:24), intangible, and imperceptible (unless He reveals Himself, we cannot reach or know Him) and His Word is among the first means He uses to make Himself known in a physical world, in a tangible, perceptible way (that we can grasp with our senses) through the expression of His Word in the Holy Scriptures recorded in our Bible.

The Bible is not the end.
The Bible is the means to the end.
Yet, what God reveals as recorded in Scripture is vital and we cannot arrive at the end without it.

There are many doors (ideas, philosophies, religions, lifestyles, paths etc.) but there is only One that leads to life and without the benefit of what God has already revealed as recorded in Holy Scripture, you will not see it properly and will miss it.

The Bible is vital.
But, the Bible is not the end.
The Bible is the means to the end.

The Bible is the frame to the portal.

Jesus is the door (and the bridge aka The Way).

The Father and His Kingdom is the end.

We’re not getting anywhere without the Door. So, the Door is the principal thing.

To those who have been granted ears to hear, eyes to see and approach the frame (Bible) in faith, the Door will appear.

Blessed are those who can see the Door! It is a marvelous, glorious thing to see the Door!

But we must still enter in.

Receive what the invisible God made visible through the Holy Spirit so you could perceive Him –which is the frame, Scripture, which points to the Door, Jesus Christ.

ASK, humbling yourself, confessing your deafness and blindness and He will give you ears to hear and eyes to see.
SEEK, searching diligently, believing God is and the Door will appear.
KNOCK, believing what God has revealed through Scripture and in these last days what He has spoken to us by His Son who came to us in the flesh, and the Door will be opened to you.

Don’t just stand at the Door.

Don’t be like the hypocrites who

stand outside pontificating about the frame,
won’t go in themselves and won’t allow others to,
striving about words,
straining a gnat and swallowing a camel,
always learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth,
putting on shows based on their fleshly interpretation of the frame,
having a form of godliness but denying its power,
flattering ourselves with vain, empty, self-serving practices of legalism.

Don’t just stand at the Door.

Enter in.

But we can’t take anything with us.

I have to leave my identity behind.

I have to leave my pursuits behind.

I have to leave my possessions behind.

I have to trust Him for everything.

As we enter in, The Way transfigures us because no flesh can enter the Kingdom of God.

As we continue, The Way becomes narrower and narrower, forcing us to put things down and take things off, until all that can pass is a pure heart and spirit before God.

Believe.
See the Door.
Enter in.

When we enter in:

stepping out on what He reveals,
continuing along The Way in obedience,
allowing Him to conform us to the image of His dear Son,
yielding everything in our lives that is not like Him for Him to cut away,
exposing ourselves to the light, confessing sin and allowing Him to cleanse us from sin;

God becomes real to us. God is spirit so the manifestation of His reality is spiritual. There is a knowing. His Spirit bears witness with our spirit confirming that we are His (Romans 4:16-17, Galatians 6-7).

What is the evidence? How do I know that it has happened?

Love. (1 John 4:12)

You will love as He defines it. It is unmistakable and unlike anything on earth (John 13:35).

I have not attained. I know only in part. I have much growing to do. So, I press.

Join me.

Don’t just know the Bible, know God.

Enter in.

Know God.

Love.

#PerfectOurLove

52 Weeks Of Gratefulness #35 – Pearson and Pepper Liddell

Liddells and Lucketts

In Week 35 of 52 Weeks of Gratefulness, I give thanks for Pearson and Pepper Liddell.

“Melissa and I are calling to see what divorce lawyers you would recommend. We want to end this as quickly and amicably as possible.”

This picture was taken less than 24 hours after that call.

The call was made to Pearson and Pepper Liddell, a couple who hosted a Christian marriage ministry that Melissa and I had been a part of for the last five years. During their ministry, they urged each couple to commit to a pact: to take divorce off the table. I was always reluctant to do so because I had a line in the sand. There were things I felt I deserved. There were certain things I wasn’t going to tolerate. There was only so much I was going to endure. I was only willing to go so far.

“Can you meet with us?”, they replied. Early the next morning they drove 4 hours from Georgia to meet with Melissa and I in a location they prepared at New Horizon’s Church in Starkville, Mississippi.

They labored with us in prayer and in the Word for almost 8 hours. It took that long, mostly because I’m pretty familiar with the Bible and was craftily twisting scripture to justify my position. Pearson was definitely no novice, but most importantly, while I was in the flesh, he was in the Spirit and said to me, “The problem with your logic and interpretation of scripture is that it’s built on the basis of what you want. But what does God want?”

Check.

Grasping at this point, I retort, “He wants my peace -1 Corinthians 7:15.”

Pearson and Pepper jointly replied, “Does God want that more than He wants to redeem and sanctify your wife and children through the ark of His holy institution? More than He want’s to make Himself known through your ministry to your wife as Christ’s to the church? If peace is primary, what about Jesus’ peace, that of His only begotten Son?”

Check and mate.

The fact that was indisputable is Christ’s purpose from before creation is redemptive. He came to seek and save that which was lost -Luke 19:10. That is what God wants. This is the ministry that Jesus took upon Himself and He was obedient to death, even the humiliating death of the cross -Philippians 2:8. From the beginning, God instituted marriage to point to Christ with His redemptive purpose in view.

I had been led astray by a focus on my own selfish purposes and desires. Pearson and Pepper were the shepherds that led us to repentance and back to the heart of the Father.

They reminded me that marriage is not mine for my pleasure and purposes. Marriage is God’s, made for His purpose and I am humbly just a minister in it. Marriage is a great and wonderful mystery and, as with most things, when done His way results in outcomes that far exceed anything I could even hope to achieve.

You can’t tell at first glance, but if you look closely at the picture, you can see the tint of red in all of our eyes from crying. This is what has characterized our walk with the Liddell’s. They don’t play church. We deal with real life. They are transparent about their own struggles and are therefore able to help us with ours. We confess our sins to one another and are healed together. God’s grace toward us through the Liddell’s has tremendously blessed us, our children and people we didn’t even know that God was using our marriage to reach.

I have since taken divorce off the table, for any reason, come what may. Christ gave it all so that we may have the true riches and pleasure of being one together with God in Him. The Liddell’s through word and deed have demonstrated that, when done right, marriage is a model of that.

I’m grateful. #52WoG

Originally posted to Facebook on August 27, 2021.