THE DIVINE PLEASURE – Part 2

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THE DIVINE PLEASURE – Part 2

1 Chronicles 29:17 I know also, my Elohim, that thou triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of mine heart I have willingly offered all these things: and now have I seen with joy thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly unto thee.

18 O IAUE, Elohim of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people, and prepare their heart unto thee:

The purpose of all creation is to please its maker, to take joy in Him and to walk before Him in righteousness (to be “very good” again).

We observed in our last post that IAUE created all things unto His pleasure and creation was pleasing to Him because in its created state, it was very good.  It was intrinsically perfect and pure and righteous. Man (Adam and Eve) was very good.  Their every act, every word, every thought was pure and consistent with the nature and will of IAUE.  When that ceased to be, when man “fell” and chose a different path to that which IAUE had set before them, they ceased to be good.  They ceased to be righteous.

Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after Elohim.

12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

Romans 8:6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against IAUE: for it is not subject to the law of IAUE, neither indeed can be.

8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please IAUE.

Restoring that lost goodness and righteousness is why Messiah came into the world.  Man lost sight of who he was and why he existed. Yahushua came to restore that sight to a blind mankind.  Mankind was blind because in the fall, man became servant to the kingdom of darkness.  Man had no light by which to see the goodness and righteousness of IAUE.  Yahushua came as the light of the world so that those in darkness could see the Light of IAUE’s goodness and righteousness.

Isaiah 9:2 The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

John 8:12 Then spake Yahushua again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

We all know that Messiah came to bring forgiveness of sins to mankind.  The Scriptures declare this over and over again; but has it ever occurred to you that man’s sins were his every thought, word and deed that ran contrary to his creative purpose?  When man behaves contrary to that which brings IAUE pleasure, he transgresses his creative purpose.  

Imagine yourself with a vacuum cleaner that you researched and studied to be the best product on the market.  You paid a good price for it and found it to be an excellent vacuum cleaner that did a superior job of sweeping your floors and carpets.  This time, however, you turn it on and begin walking it across the carpet; but its rotors stop turning, and the vacuum ceases, and you are unable to clean your carpets. Instantly, your attitude towards the vacuum cleaner is not one of joy.  You cannot take pleasure in this machine that was carefully designed and manufactured to do this one simple job; because it is incapable of doing the job.  It’s broken.  What do you do?  Do you toss it out into the dumpster and curse that it ever existed, or do you take it to someone who will repair it so you can once again take joy in it doing the very thing for which it was created?  This is what IAUE did with us in sending His son to rescue us from our broken condition.

It will take some time of meditating on this idea before it takes root and grows fruit in your life. It is not a commonly taught concept that we were created for IAUE’s pleasure. To the natural mind, one might immediately consider, “IAUE is one selfish being if he made everything just to please Himself.”  When you think about your own life; when you look around your house at your home and your possessions; when you think of your life and all it entails; you might recoil at the idea that you should consider all of it subject to a tyrannical selfish being who might say, “Get rid of that.  Stop doing that.  Give those things away.” just so He can be pleased.  This, however, is the thinking of the natural man, not the spiritual man.  It views pleasing IAUE as a combative purpose to pleasing yourself.  The natural man is the selfish one, not IAUE.

When IAUE desires His creation to behave in a way that is pleasing to Him, He is wanting the very best outcome for his creation. There is no selfishness in IAUE.  IAUE is light and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).  When He created man for His pleasure; He designed within man the ability to measure his own joy and pleasure and sense of fulfillment when he is living to please IAUE. Pleasing IAUE is man’s greatest pleasure.

Psalm 16:11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

Let’s consider our vacuum cleaner example.  Let’s imaging the vacuum cleaner had a life, a mind of its own.  How would it feel if it could no longer do what it was created to do?  What would it devote itself to if it could no longer vacuum floors?  Men who come back from wars with an amputated leg often feel they are now only half a man and what good is it to keep on living?  See?  When we view our purpose in jeopardy, we fail to see the worth of continuing to live.  We must learn to think of our purpose being jeopardized with every act or word or thought that is unrighteous; and that does not pursue that which is good.

We must eradicate wrong thoughts about IAUE; and learn the true nature of our Father in Heaven.  The joy He takes in us is reproduced within us through our increasing knowledge of Him.  His joy feeds our joy as His pleasure in us is met by our living unto His pleasure.

David prophesied about Messiah coming to restore us to our creative purpose.

Psalm 40:7 Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me,

8 I delight to do thy will, O my Elohim: yea, thy law is within my heart.

When the writer to the Hebrews recited this prophecy, he gave it more context.

Hebrews 10:5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:

6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.

7 Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O Elohim.

8 Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law;

9 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O Elohim. He taketh away the first that he may establish the second.

This institution of the Torah, the law of Moses, was in part to provide types and shadows of the coming Messiah; so the Torah would lead the Hebrew people unto their Messiah.  Once discovering and embracing their Messiah, they would no longer need the shadow of the true.  They would have the true.  So, sacrifices were never offered to achieve the righteousness of IAUE.  They were not acts that demonstrated the goodness of man such that it would appeal to IAUE’s pleasure.  He NEVER took pleasure in the slaughtering of animals.  What He took pleasure in was the performance of His will.  Yahushua came, as it was written in Psalms, to do IAUE’s will.  What did this merit from IAUE?

Matthew 3:17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Luke 3:21 Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened,

22 And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.

Matthew 17:5  While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.

                      

2 Peter 1:17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

If Yahushua devoted his entire life to pleasing His Father, should not we do the same?  Do you imagine that doing His Father’s will was unpleasant to Yahushua?  Do you think Yahushua ever thought of IAUE as being a selfish deity that every now and then should be ignored because he had a better idea of what to do or what to say?  Or can you see that doing His Father’s will was his chiefest joy?  It is not unlike little children who do things just to see their father’s smile of delight in them.  Nothing thrills the heart of a child more than seeing their father taking delight in them. It is built within us to take joy in our father’s delight.

The sooner we commit to this life, a life of pleasing IAUE, the sooner we are going to discover how everything IAUE has given to us works through that medium of shared pleasure in each other.

Next week we will study the correlation between the will of IAUE and the pleasure of IAUE.

THE DIVINE PLEASURE – Part 1

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THE DIVINE PLEASURE – Part 1

Revelation 4:10 The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

11 Thou art worthy, O IAUE, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

We cannot afford to live our lives with one foot in the Kingdom of IAUE and another foot in this world.  This is no half-hearted venture we are pursuing. It isn’t a game.  It will cost us everything.

We have just completed a 5-part study on “Academic Knowledge vs. The Truth.”  Access to Truth does not come through the flesh, through our human abilities, our skills or our intellect. If we want the Truth; if we want the revelation that produces true wisdom and understanding, we must embrace the source of such Truth.  We must change our perspective of who we are and what is important to us.

There have been two questions that have plagued mankind for millennia  They are:

   Where did I come from? and

  Why am I here? 

Whole systems of philosophy have been fabricated to provide answers to these questions.  Through the ages countless men and women have devoted their whole lives to pursuing the answers to these questions; and yet for all their toil, the world’s populace still wonders, dissatisfied with their postulated conclusions.

Man searches for these answers because he does not want IAUE’s answer.  These tormenting questions persist as the result of the fall of man…of the separation between IAUE and His creation borne of man’s disobedience.  Into the darkness of Satan’s kingdom man fell from the grace and the goodness and the glory of IAUE Elohim’s kingdom of Light, where knowledge and wisdom and understanding are the normal bill of fare.  To seek his answers there would require man to acknowledge both his guilt and his dependence upon IAUE.  Satan’s kingdom does not foster such humility; and yet, what do we find the primal command of Yahushua to those who would follow him?

Matthew 11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

A person with a meek and lowly heart is one that will embrace the Truth no matter what it is, no matter what others think about him.  The Truth sets him free.  He is not afraid to own his guiltiness, his ignorance, his weakness, his dependence, etc. He is also willing to embrace the wonder, the glory, the majesty and the inheritance revealed that belongs to him as a son of IAUE.  A humble man accepts the obvious along with the unthinkable, the too-good-to-be-true realities of the Kingdom of Light.  It is not until we learn this first lesson of Yahushua Messiah that we are prepared to embrace what, for the sake of these lessons, we will call:  The Divine Pleasure.

Revelation 4:11 Thou art worthy, O IAUE, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and  for thy pleasure  they are and were created.

This is one of those verses that people read and say, “That’s nice,” then move on to the next verse.  Nice sounding verses end up in praise and worship songs with lovely melodies; and we are more focused on the music than on the words we are singing.  This verse discloses the purpose of the entirety of creation, the reason for the existence of the time/space continuum.  To miss this is to miss the foundation of everything that is important in the material universe. IAUE made all of creation for Himself.  The singularly best thing all of creation can do is to yield itself wholly to His pleasure.

Let’s take a look at His creation.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning Elohim created the heaven and the earth.

3 And Elohim said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And Elohim saw the light, that it was good…

9 And Elohim said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And…Elohim saw that it was good.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and Elohim saw that it was good.

17 And Elohim set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and Elohim saw that it was good.

21 And Elohim created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and Elohim saw that it was good.

25 And Elohim made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and Elohim saw that it was good.

31 And Elohim saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Have you ever read the first chapter of Genesis, noticed all the times that IAUE created something then called it “good?”  Did you ever stop to wonder, “What is good?  By what standard or measure did IAUE evaluate His creation to be “good?” What made it good as opposed to, say, “all right,” or “not very good at all?”  It was good to Him. His own opinion was the standard.  He was satisfied with every aspect of what He had made; and most importantly, His creation was responsive to Him.  All of creation not only was good in IAUE’s eyes, it was good in itself.  This is a critical fact.  IAUE made creation good in itself. That is why it was very good to Him.

Of what benefit is it to us to recognize that IAUE created all things good and that they were created for His pleasure?  It is everything.  Before the fall of man, Adam knew where he came from; and he knew why he was there in the Garden of Eden.  He came from IAUE, and he existed for the good pleasure of his Elohim.  To know this, today, is to know where WE came from and to know why we are here.

When man fell, he lost his intrinsic “goodness.” He lost his righteousness.  He also lost the smile of IAUE.  Man no longer lived in such a way as to delight the heart of his Elohim.  IAUE instantly put in place the mechanism of man’s restoration to the goodness of IAUE and to the good pleasure of his Elohim. 

1 Chronicles 29:9 Then the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly, because with perfect heart they offered willingly to IAUE: and David the king also rejoiced with great joy.

10 Wherefore David blessed IAUE before all the congregation: and David said, Blessed be thou, IAUE Elohim of Israel our father, for ever and ever.

11 Thine, O IAUE is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O IAUE, and thou art exalted as head above all.

12 Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all.

13 Now therefore, our Elohim, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name.

14 But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.

15 For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.

16 O IAUE our Elohim, all this store that we have prepared to build thee an house for thine holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own.

17 I know also, my Elohim, that thou triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of mine heart I have willingly offered all these things: and now have I seen with joy thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly unto thee.

18 O IAUE, Elohim of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people, and prepare their heart unto thee:

The purpose of all creation is to please its maker, to take joy in Him and to walk before Him in righteousness (to be “very good” again).  We will look into how we accomplish this in our next lesson.

ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE VS. THE TRUTH – Part 5

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ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE VS. THE TRUTH – Part 5

2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Master, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Master.

If we hold fast our dedication to being His disciples, there is no limit to what the Holy Spirit can reveal to us.  If and when we waiver on this purpose of heart, we become the doubleminded man who can expect to receive no spiritual insight or revelation at all from IAUE.  This kind of consecration of our life to Messiah is the most basic object of the gospel. If we are not willing to forfeit all to Him, we are not worthy to be called His disciple (see Luke 14:26-35).  If we purpose in our heart to cleave to our Master, then we are going to live the most exciting and rewarding life possible to man.

Today, we conclude this study.  We have observed that there are many obstacles to our receiving the Truth when we study the Scriptures.  Those we have listed (which, by no means, is an exhaustive list) are:

1.  Human intellect. 

2.  Not DOING what the Scriptures tell us to do. 

3.  A carnal/natural mind.  

4.  Not relying/depending on the Holy Spirit.

5.  Lack of understanding righteousness / dullness of hearing.

6.  Doublemindedness.

7.  Not being purposed of heart to cleave to Yahushua.

All of these obstacles have something in common.  They all betray a lack of total commitment to discipleship to Yahushua Messiah.  I recall a story I heard of a young boy who went fishing with his grandfather.  Sitting on the banks of the river, the boy asked his grandfather what the secret to success was.  In an instant, the grandfather grabbed his grandson and shoved his head under the water and held him there.  The boy, fighting and twisting with all his might, tried to get free of his grandfather’s grip to get his head out of the water.  After what felt like a very long time, the man lifted his grandson out of the river water.  The boy took a great gasp of air; and as would be expected, he yelled at his grandfather asking him why on earth he did that.  The man looked at his grandson and said when you want success as much as you wanted that last breath, you will find it.

The religious culture in the Christian world, today, rewards even the most half-hearted efforts of believers who start something, then quit or fail to complete it.  They even make jokes to laugh about how it was too difficult a task to have even tried.  Attendance at a church service is proof enough that they are faithful to Yahushua.  No one, absolutely no one, ever asks another if they are overcoming temptation in their lives; or if they need prayer to overcome any sin or weakness in walking uprightly before the Master.  It just isn’t done; because it simply isn’t that big of a virtue in the minds of the contemporary congregation.  If you are happy and you mingle with others at put-luck dinners or church fellowships, you are accepted as one of the in-crowd. 

Discipleship to Messiah must be to us as that boy’s next breath.  We must so extremely desire to learn of Yahushua and become like him in every single way that we might be able to say, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Master.”  Our greatest glory should be that others can see Messiah in us.

Colossians 1: 27 To whom Elohim would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Messiah in you, the hope of glory:

28 Whom we preach…

Paul preached the good news of Messiah to everyone he could.  His purpose was to birth Messiah into each person through the New Creation (Galatians 4:19).  Messiah in us is our hope of glory.  Paul preached a person, not a message (“whom we preach…”).  We have discussed in previous lessons that when a person is born again, it is the actual spirit of Yahushua who becomes the animating force of our life.  James tells us that as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead (James 2:26).  When we are born again, the spirit that used to animate our physical body is replaced with the spirit of Yahushua (Galatians 2:20). We become “in Messiah” and Messiah becomes “in us” in the exact way he prayed might happen in John 17.  Paul told the Colossians that our own new spirit, our new life, now, is hidden with Messiah in Elohim (Colossians 3:3).  

What does all of this have to do with receiving the “Aha!” moments of revelation when reading and studying the Scriptures?  We are not to read the Scriptures just for the academic information that any human intellect might glean.  No, we look for Messiah who is within us to be reflected upon the pages of the Scripture.  We see him who is within us shining his face back to us.

2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Master, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Master.

When our hearts are wholly committed to the Master, the Scriptures become a mirror showing us what he, who is within us, is like.  Discipleship, by its very nature and definition, is a compete giving of one’s self to the instruction of a master, in order to know what he knows, be what he is, live as he does.  Discipleship intends to reproduce the master in one’s life.  When we approach the Scriptures with this objective, revelation will become a way of life.  Messiah will shine his Truth to us, and we will shine him to the world around us.  This is the process of our being the light of the world.

Remember the obstacles we have discussed.  We cannot afford to live our lives with one foot in the Kingdom of IAUE and another foot in this world.  This is no half-hearted venture we are pursuing. It isn’t a game.  It will cost us everything.

Proverbs 23:23  Buy the truth and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.

ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE VS. THE TRUTH – Part 4

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ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE VS. THE TRUTH – Part 4

John 6:63  It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

In the first three lessons to this series we have discussed the need to connect with the Holy Spirit when we read the Scriptures, otherwise all we will glean is the academic understanding of the words printed on the page.  Without the Holy Spirit, we reduce the Scriptures to equality with any novel.  Any person can read the Scriptures and tell you what it says; but without spiritual revelation, they will be incapable of telling you what it means.

Let there be no misunderstanding.  It is imperative that we diligently pursue an academic grasp of the Scriptures.  We must feed ourselves with the Scriptures in order to give the Holy Spirit the “raw material” with which to reveal Truth to our hearts.

John 14:26  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

(I have been mentoring a young believer this past year; and one of my most repeated instructions to him is to keep reading.  I explained to him that the more of the Scripture he reads, the more the Holy Spirit has to work with to bring him an understanding of Truth. If he has read 2/3 of the Old Testament and 1/3 of the New Testament, the Holy Spirit does not have 1/3 of the Old Testament or 2/3 of the New Testament to use to teach him, and certainly not to bring anything he has not read to his remembrance.  If a critical element of a Truth is contained in the Book of Malachi, then that revelation will be postponed until Malachi has been read.  I explained that he will discover his understanding of spiritual truths will be enlarged in direct proportion to the amount of the Scripture he absorbs.  Just, this week, he came to me laughing that he had listened to a sermon preached by someone online and he found himself disagreeing with something the preacher said.  While listening to the message, the Holy Spirit brought to his mind a number of verses, woven together from various books of the Scripture, and the cohesion of these verses resulted in a different understanding than the preacher was presenting.  He was laughing because this was the first demonstration of what I had been teaching him; that one day, the Holy Spirit would begin piecing the various books of the Scripture together to form Truth for him.)

There are obstacles to our receiving the Truth of the Scriptures.  So far, we have discussed four of them.

1.  Human intellect. 

2.  Not DOING what the Scriptures tell us to do. 

3.  A carnal/natural mind.   

4.  Not relying/depending on the Holy Spirit.

Today, we will look at three more obstacles to revelation knowledge…or what we call, receiving “Aha!” moments---those moments in time when the Holy Spirit breathes life into something we have read in the Scriptures, and all of a sudden we get it!  It transitions from academic information into life-giving reality.

5.  Lack of understanding righteousness / dullness of hearing.

Hebrews 5:8  Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;

9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;

10 Called of Elohim an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.

11 Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing.

12 For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of IAUE; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.

13 For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.

14 But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Notice that the writer would like to have developed this subject matter further; but his readership was not qualified to hear it. It would have been like casting pearls before swine.  They were “dull of hearing.”  Specifically, they were unskillful in the word of righteousness.  That is what produced their dullness of hearing.  (I covered this subject in the two posts just prior to beginning this current series of lessons. I want, at this time, to look at it from a different  perspective.) 

Acts 28:27 For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. (See also, Matthew 13:15)

In this passage, the audience was dull of hearing because they had hardened their hearts.  They had positioned their lives NOT to seek the Truth.  They were content with what they knew already.  Their academic knowledge, void of spiritual revelation of the underlying Truth, was enough to accommodate the kind of lives they wanted to live.  They were not interested in righteousness.

Matthew 5:6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

This is the kind of purpose of heart that Messiah encouraged…and sought for in men:  People who longed for purity of life and the ability to walk in a manner pleasing to IAUE at all times.

Matthew 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of IAUE, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Righteousness is a quality that finds nothing desirable in what the world offers.  It cannot be enticed by the world’s goods, by position, or by honor, or riches, or things.  It only wants to know IAUE and to become as much like Him as possible.  If that is not our heart’s objective, we become dull of hearing---our hearts become hardened to the voice of the Holy Spirit.  We don’t want to hear what He will say because it might interfere with our own objectives or purposes. 

If we do not hunger for righteousness, we might consider reevaluating if we are even a disciple of Messiah. If we expect Him to teach us, our ears have to be open to hearing what

6.  Doublemindedness.

James 1:5  If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of IAUE, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of IAUE.

8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

In this passage we see with clarity that IAUE is prepared to give wisdom (spiritual revelation and understanding) freely and liberally.  He is not withholding anything from us.  He is not picking and choosing who gets to know things.  He WANTS to freely give us all things.

1 Corinthians 2:12  Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of IAUE; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of IAUE.

IAUE is, however, unable to pour out His wisdom into a doubleminded man.  A man of faith is singularly purposed to do the Father’s will.

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him…

A double-minded man, however, is not a man of faith.  He is a man of two minds.  I often speak of believers who need to make a choice, some kind of decision, and there are options available; so they pray to see what IAUE wants them to do.  When He tells them what His will is in the matter, they evaluate HIS choice alongside the other options; then they choose what is right in their own eyes (See Proverbs 14:12, 16:25). At that point, even if they choose what the Holy Spirit has told them is the correct choice; they cannot proceed there in faith; because faith is not what brought them there.  The natural/carnal mind made the ultimate decision.  If we want spiritual revelation, we must relegate our entire life to it.  We cannot maintain worldly options. It must be the exclusive course of action for our lives.  The more we demonstrate that we are so inclined to follow His will whenever He reveals it to us, because our lives belong to Him only, we will discover those “Aha!” moments become regular features of our day to day living.

7.  Not being purposed of heart to cleave to Yahushua.

Acts 11:22 Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem: and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch.

23 Who, when he came, and had seen the grace of IAUE, was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Master.

Throughout the Scriptures, this last obstacle to revelation may be the most obvious.  It is related to being double-minded; for when our consecration to the Master wanes and we begin preferring ourselves over serving Him, it hardens our heart to the voice of the Holy Spirit.  Paul told us in Romans 12:1-2, to offer our bodies a living sacrifice that the Master may have freedom to live His life through ours.  We must remain yielded to that purpose.  We cannot waver from it.  If we hold fast our dedication to being His disciples, there is no limit to what the Holy Spirit can reveal to us.  If and when we waiver on this purpose of heart, we become the doubleminded man who can expect to receive no spiritual insight or revelation at all from IAUE.  This kind of consecration of our life to Messiah is the most basic object of the gospel. If we are not willing to forfeit all to Him, we are not worthy to be called His disciple (see Luke 14:26-35).  If we purpose in our heart to cleave to our Master, then we are going to live the most exciting and rewarding life possible to man.