THE DAILY EXCHANGE
For which cause we faint not; but though
our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed
day by day.
I Corinthians 4:16
A problem that almost every one of us has is that our
grasp of spiritual truth with our heads is far beyond what we have turned into substance in our lives. We grasp the theology, we understand marvelous truths, but we're not living them. For instance, we can talk
about the joy of the Lord, we can write books about it, read books about it,
and even taste it when the assembly gathers from time to time. But it's quite
another thing to have the joy of the Lord as a constant burning flame in our
hearts
when we get up for another rainy day,
when our husband or our wife has
disappointed us again,
when our best friend keeps letting us
down,
our house is broken into,
or we have to
work at a job where there's corruption
on every side of us,
- and still to have in our hearts the joy of the Lord.
There were no doubt a lot of
people in the apostle Paul's day who had just as much
insight as Paul did and who had a grasp of scripture which was as good, if not
better, than his. But there was one thing that Paul had which made him
effective when many other people failed, and that was that Paul somehow managed
to translate his insight into living so that he was the embodiment of everything
he taught. How did he do it? Listen to him:
For which cause we faint not, but though
our outward man is wasting away, our inward man is being renewed every day.
Paul's body is getting older
and he's being hassled on all sides by many problems. He has aches and pains.
Yet every day this inner man comes up fresh, new, unsullied, clean and bright, burning with the joy
of the Lord in the midst of chaos. You can't sink him.
His outer man is looked upon as an
imposter,
but his inner man is true.
His outer man is unknown by the world,
his inner man is well-known by God.
His outer man is dying,
his inner man is always alive.
His outer man is being punished,
his inner man cannot be killed.
His outer man is sorrowful,
his inner man is always rejoicing.
His outer man is poor,
his inner man is making many rich.
His outer man has nothing,
his inner man possess
all things.
And when Paul talks about being renewed, day-by-day, I
believe he's talking about something specific in his relationship with Jesus. Every day Paul breaks conformity with this
world again, and he's renewed in the spirit of his mind.
One of the best ways to understand this miracle of
daily renewal is to think of it as an exchange in which we bring our old man
(the old Adam) to Jesus, and lay it at the foot of the cross, and in exchange
for it we get the new man.
And one of the best descriptions in the Bible of what
Jesus will do for each of us, even as He did it for Paul is found in Isaiah 61.
Usually when we read this passage we think of it as a
description of our ministry, and it is that. But we
can't begin to minister in this manner to other people until this first
becomes, daily, Jesus' ministry to us.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek;
he hath sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the
prison to them that are bound.
To proclaim the acceptable year of the
Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion,
to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of
praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of
righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.
And they shall build the old wastes,
they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste
cities, the desolations of many generations.
The Spirit
of the Lord God is upon Jesus to give us,
- good news,
- to bind up our wounds,
- to preach deliverance to us,
- to set us free from captivity,
- and to comfort us in our mourning.
When He begins to do this, the exchange takes place:
He gives us beauty for ashes,
the oil of joy for mourning,
the garment of praise for a spirit of heaviness, so that we might be
trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that we might be able to go
forth and build the old wastes, and raise up the former desolations, and repair
the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.
There cannot be a more accurate description of the
situation in which every one of us finds himself or herself. Our wasted city, and its wasted suburbs are the result of the desolation
of generations of evil that are now beginning to bear fruit. If we are going to
live in the midst of this death and survive,
(spiritually as well as physically) and bring it some healing and do some
building we ourselves will have to be renewed every day by God. There will have
to be an exchange in which we bring the old man, all the evil that is in us,
and in its place receive something fresh from God every day
To appoint
to them that mourn in
I do not see how we can look out over the town where we live, and observe what is really taking place in human
hearts, and not mourn. How can we look into our own hearts and face the truth about the ugly,
evil, twisted, warped, weird thoughts that go through our heads, and not mourn?
When we begin to see, with the eyes that God gives us, we no longer go around
criticizing, we find ourselves unable to do anything but mourn. We begin to
weep. It is with this frame of mind that we have to
approach the Throne of our God every single day.
To give unto
them beauty for ashes....
We bring the ashes of our self-lust, the ashes of our
self-righteousness, the ashes of our good intentions which so seldom
materialize, the ashes of our own bigotry, our deceitfulness, our bitterness,
our compromise, and we lay them at His feet. Only when we are willing to lay
our ashes at His feet, instead of what we think to be our own righteousness, is
He able then to give us beauty. He gives us His beauty, the beauty of His
presence, of His holiness which is clean and pure and unsullied and unfailing.
One thing have I desired of the Lord,
that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days
of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.
If I don't see the beauty of the Lord every single day
in His temple, my vision is warped. Pretty soon all I see is ugliness
everywhere I look. And I'm overwhelmed by that ugliness. But that's not
necessary, there's no reason why we shouldn't have the beauty
of the Lord refreshing our vision every single day. Don't be content until, in
your prayer life, (and you won't survive with out a prayer life), you are
bringing those ashes and laying them down at the feet of the Lord every day and
receiving for those ashes the beauty of His presence.
With His own hand Jesus will begin to clothe your mind
and spirit with His beauty. And you may not yet be dancing for joy, but at
least you will know now that you have this much: you have, for your ashes, the
beauty of the Lord coming into your heart.
The oil of
joy for mourning....
Don't be afraid to mourn before the Lord. Don't be
afraid to bring your weeping to Him. We've done most of our crying and weeping
in total secret. Nobody has any idea how much mourning has been going on in
your heart while your face has been smiling. But now we bring this to the Lord
and He transforms our mourning of self-pity into the mourning of repentance.
Now I begin to weep; not because everybody has let me down, but seeing now with
the eyes God has given me, I start to weep because I have let others down —
especially have I disappointed my Heavenly Father. I begin to weep because I
see that I am part of this unclean city, and its unclean suburbs.
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God, I'm a man of unclean lips, says Isaiah
and I dwell in the midst of
a people of unclean lips.