More Oil

The title of my blog site is truly living up to itself.

You know, I must say though... that there is a lot of responsibility on my part. The Lord allures me deeper into Himself the more I seek after Him. When I begin to dive deeper into the Word and study about the Lord I become so much more tender to Him. I begin to hear His voice more clearly.

I have been writing a paper on the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25. The more I study His Word, the more I realize how ignorant I was before I came into these new revelations. As the Church (including me), we have emphasized obedience to God's will as our main focus. We must do do do!...reach as many people for the Gospel as possible! There's not enough time!......

This is very true, but it couldn't be more wrong. I know that sounds far-fetched, but bare with me.

I think maybe that most of the Church has had this idea--the idea of building ministries in order to grow and grow and do the most we can for the Kingdom of God....whether it be certain outreaches to the poor, or doing the good deeds that we know the Lord would be pleased with us.

All these things are good, but they are missing the most important thing of all-- deep connection with the Bridegroom God's heart.

When we stand before our Bridegroom King Jesus, the most important thing that we must have is oil. The oil is our intimacy with Him-- it is the active dialogue with our heart and the Holy Spirit. The oil is our secret private relationship with God.

In the parable, Jesus allows the virgins who have oil to come with Him to the wedding banquet. The other virgins who brought no oil for their lamps were turned away. The bridegroom did not know them. The foolish virgins begged the wise ones for some of their oil. But the wise ones could not give them any. You cannot give someone else your relationship with God. Oil is personal. It is our own secret history in God.

These foolish virgins were believers in Christ, but they did not truly know Him. They did at one point, but they lost their oil. When it came time for the bridegroom to come, they were not ready. They were unprepared to meet Him.

Jesus is pretty serious about this. I never fully understood the scripture that talks about the people who cast out devils in the name of Jesus and healed the sick in the name of Jesus, and yet they were still turned away by the Lord because He did not know them.

Well, it's all coming together for me now. All that you do in your life holds no meaning if you don't have the love relationship with the King of Kings. Everything is meaningless. All that you have done (even for the Kingdom) means nothing without a constant connection with HIM.

What He desires of you is your love. Our primary and first mandate with him is to connect with Him--to love Him. THIS is our purpose in life. To love Him. To be so in love with Him... and everything else will flow out of this.--your obedience to His will. We cannot walk in purity without our heart's connection with the Holy Spirit.

The Lord is offering to us an encounter with Him. He is not forcing it on us. He is offering Himself, but we must say yes. We must put the Word of the Lord in our hearts. We must take time and cultivate a prayer life. We have to exhort some effort in knowing and encountering Him. He knows that we are weak. He knows that we are broken. He knows that we cannot make it on our own. But He is THERE! He is there...if only we would run after Him. Run into His arms. Get to know His Majesty!

We are the Bride of Christ. Will we be ready when the Bridegroom comes? Will our lamps be full of oil? The Bride of Christ speaks of a position of experiencing God's heart. We want to be sons of God to experience His power, but we want to function as the Bride of Christ to experience His heart. We won't use His power right if we don't experience His heart in the right way.

This is where we come to the "difficult" part. Sometimes it isn't easy devoting yourself to prayer every day...even if it's for 10 minutes. We go on with our lives and think that if we just be obedient to the Lord's will and do good things and stay away from temptation as much as possible then we're doing pretty good... and surely the Lord is pleased with us. Right??
But do you know the heart of God on a deep level? Does your heart break when His breaks? Do you feel what He feels? Can you honestly say that you KNOW Him? It's not enough to say that you have heard all the stories from the Bible about God... Do you truly know Him and commune with Him on a day to day basis? Have you seen the manifestation of His presence and power in your life?

In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer says:

Private prayer should be practiced by every Christian. Long periods of Bible meditation will purify our gaze and direct it; church attendance will enlarge our outlook and increase our love for others. Service and work and activity--all are good and should be engaged in by every Christian. BUT at the bottom of all these things, giving meaning to them, will be the inward habit of beholding God. A new set of eyes will develop within us enabling us to be looking at God while our outward eyes are seeing the scenes of this passing world...

When the habit of inwardly gazing Godward becomes fixed within us, we shall be ushered onto a new level of spiritual life more in keeping with the promises of God and the mood of the New Testament. The Triune God will be our dwelling place even while our feet walk the low road of simple duty here among men.

In studying all of this I begin to wonder about my life and question whether or not I truly know the Lord. I know so much about Him. I feel a longing to go deeper into my relationship with Him. We should always be going deeper into the knowledge of Him. We will never get enough. He can never be completely understood. This means that we can know Him more intimately every day and we will never reach the end of it.

In the amazing words of Mike Bickle (speaking of his minsitry):

Through the seasons of life- it is like the tide of the sea. Some seasons are an increase of impact, and other seasons its a decrease, because God loves us. He orders our life this way. If you are signing up for an ever increasing glorious well known ministry, forget it! That is not what the Kingdom of God is about. Sign up for oil! Sign up to connect with Him. If you're going for the oil, you're not going to be proud when your ministry gets big and you're not going to be depressed when the numbers get little. If you are depressed when the numbers are little, then you will be proud when the numbers are big- because you're living by the numbers. Your identity is in how big your ministry is.

Wow. Doesn't that sound like so many ministries out there?...all in it for the number of people they can reach. (And yet, it sounds so good right? To reach as many people as you can!...to do the best you can!) But when we loose sight of our vision- to be intimately ravished by our bridegroom- then our work becomes meaningless.


Draw me unto yourself, Lord. I want to know your heart.