BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

********** ADVERTISEMENT ********** DARE TO SHINE HIS LIGHT THIS CHRISTMAS! with KCM’s 25 Days of Christmas DEC 1-25 Devotional, free gifts and a daily dare! Check it out at kcm.org. ************************************************ *********** article continues *********** Bless their hearts! I’m not being critical of those people. I’m just saying that tells me we have a problem in the Body of Christ. Not everyone realizes that, although we’re supposed to have a good time when we get together, church meetings and services are not just for our entertainment. They’re sacred assemblies where we honor God and participate with Him as He carries out His plans and purposes in people’s lives. They’re gatherings meant to be marked by a corporate sense of the reverential fear of the Lord. “But Gloria,” someone might say, “I’ve always thought of the fear of the Lord as an Old Testament concept. Does it really apply to us as New Testament believers?” Absolutely! It not only applies to us, we should be known for it. We should be like the believers in the early Church. Acts 9:31 says they were edified and multiplied, “walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost.” Notice, according to that verse, even in New Testament times the power of the Spirit and the fear of the Lord go together. They work hand in hand. Therefore, if we want to experience an increasing measure of the Holy Spirit’s supernatural comfort and power, we must make sure we’re walking in the reverence of the Lord. “How do we cultivate that kind of reverence?” you might ask. How do we overcome the pull of our flesh and its tendency to distract us? How do we discipline our physical body so that, whether we’re in our prayer time at home or assembled with other believers at church, we can give God the honor and the undivided attention He deserves? One way we do it is by practicing. An Uncomfortable Dilemma Our physical body is trained by practice. It’s naturally wired to develop habits as a result of doing things over and over. Think about what you were like before you were born again and you’ll understand what I mean. As an unbeliever, you had a habit of sinning. You didn’t have to try real hard to do it. You could sin without even thinking about it because you’d practiced all your life. You were well developed in it. When you put your faith in Jesus, although your spirit instantly became a new creation, your body didn’t. It still had the same old bad habits you’d practiced when you were in your unsaved condition. As a result, in the early days of your Christian life, while your heart was pulling you toward the things of God your flesh was still pulling you in the opposite direction. That’s a very uncomfortable way to live! When we’re first born again, it presents all of us as believers with a real dilemma. The Word of God, however, gives us the solution. It says, “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). When we practice walking in the spirit, we turn the habit-forming bent of our body to our advantage. By spending time every day in fellowship with God, praying and feeding on His Word and doing what He says, we retrain our flesh. We bring our natural, physical body into subjection and develop new habits that reflect the righteousness that’s in our reborn spirit. This is the way we, as believers, are designed to operate! It’s the reason God gave us the New Covenant. As Romans 8:4-5 says: "So that the righteous and just requirement of the Law might be fully met in us who live and move not in the ways of the flesh but in the ways of the Spirit [our lives governed not by the standards and according to the dictates of the flesh, but controlled by the Holy Spirit]. For those who are according to the flesh…set their minds on and pursue those things which gratify the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit...set their minds on and seek those things which gratify the [Holy] Spirit ("The Amplified Bible, Classic Edition"). To be clear, those verses don’t say we’ll get to the point where we’ve spiritually arrived and we don’t have to deal with the flesh anymore. No, as long as we live on the earth we have to keep practicing putting spiritual things first. Otherwise, we’ll get our attention back on natural things and fleshly desires, and we’ll lose some of our hunger for God. I’ll never forget the moment back in 1977 when I realized that very thing had happened to me. At the time, I was listening to a prophecy given by Kenneth E. Hagin. He was prophesying about believers in the last days who will march out into the world like a great spiritual army, doing the works of Jesus. “You can be part of that army if you desire,” he said. “So purpose in your heart that you’ll not be lazy, that you’ll not draw back. Purpose in your heart that you will rise up and march forward and become on fire.” When I heard those words, I realized something about myself I hadn’t previously noticed. After 10 years in ministry, I wasn’t as on fire for the Lord as I had once been! In 1967, when Ken and I had first started learning about faith and the integrity of God’s Word, I’d been so spiritually hungry that the things of God had absolutely consumed my thinking and my life. I didn’t give my attention to anything else. Partly because we were in such a desperate situation back then—broke and saddled with a mountain of debt—I saw God as my only hope. So other than taking care of my children and doing my duties at home, I spent my time with Him in the Word. 30 : BVOV

• Cover