Going Over The Wall

Weekly Sabbath Survey

Going Over The Wall —  12-9-2017

I was talking with a friend. She mentioned another of her friends who disagrees with her from time to time on some important doctrinal issues and false teaching floating around these days. Later I was thinking about that and the following “one liner” came to me: This Believer is really a good person, but is just too short to see over the wall she has come to.

We all travel along life’s road and once in a while we seem to get as far as we can go. We have hit a wall. It’s so tall we can’t see over it, let alone get over it. We may hear voices of our friends calling to us from the other side, but we are too fearful to listen. We sit, walk back and forth, run our hands along the wall. We sleep. We dream. We rest. We wait. But all the while, praying, staying in the Lord. Then, one day we stand up and wowzah!! We’re tall enough to see over the wall. That one look is “The End” for the wall. We are now thinking only of getting over that wall. We are also getting taller every day. We jump up, get a hand on the top. Then one day we give it all we’ve got and we are over! HOORAY and HALLELUJAH!!  Years ago  “Going Over The Wall” was slang in old gangster movies for escaping from prison.

For me, my very first wall was not the most difficult, but it was probably one of the most painful and maybe most significant: walking out of the denominational church I grew up in. I came to see it as a spiritual prison, keeping me from learning more. After that first challenge, in each new church I learned more things that I didn’t get at the last one. Every time I left a church (there were several), I was going over the wall. A couple of times the ‘wall’ I had to get over was a home group or ladies group I was part of. Years ago I escaped the last church and now my walls are ones of “Not Understanding.” I get to a place where I cannot see what comes next. Or, I see something in my Bible, but don’t understand it. My learning is not going forward. But I’m as impatient as I was in my younger days. I just keep walking back and forth, keeping up my strength, feeling the wall, stretching up now and then to see if it’s still too high. Then, somebody sends me an e-mail, says something to me in a phone call, I read something someone else wrote, or a dear friend says, “You need to read this book.”  And all of sudden, I’m climbing the wall, I’m over the wall and running wildly free through fields of green and beautiful forests. I’m learning and learning and getting confirmation for things I wondered about but didn’t say out loud because I wasn’t sure.  OH Happy Day! when we go over another wall.

Going over the wall is about getting to a new level of understanding in knowing the Lord or His word, His plan for our lives, and His plan for the world! I have come to a place of trying see the walls not as a hindrance to my progress, but a challenge for me to come up higher. Grow taller in Jesus. Get stronger with every victory. And every time, I make it over the wall, I get “Just a Closer Walk With Thee.”

I urge you, my friends, DO NOT just sit down at the wall telling yourself this is all there is. If you just lie there, you will be like the man at the pool who told Jesus he couldn’t get healed because nobody would help him into the water! You will lose your oomph, feel spiritually weak and not bringing your “A Game” to your life and ministry. We do not get to the stopping place on this Earth, because THAT is Heaven. The person I spoke of in the beginning here is in that awful very place of gone as far as she wants to go. In truth, it’s frightening, not knowing what all lies beyond the wall. Many good people stay put, and never find out. It takes real courage to keep jumping up to see, trying to climb out! And great faith to finally jump down on the other side.

God gave us leaders for maturing the congregation for the work of the ministry, and unity, so all KNOW the Son of God and have grown to the full measure of the height and the fullness of Messiah.

(Ephesians 4:11-13) paraphrased

Charlene Reams Manning, Believer in the Lord Jesus Messiah

copyright  May 2017

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Righteous Reality

Weekly Sabbath Survey

Righteous Reality —  6-6-2015

There’s a lot of talk about being in the Spirit, walking in the Holy Spirit. But, as ‘they’ say, Talk is cheap. And, especially so when we talk about the things of the Lord. It’s easy to discover a truth, to think about it, to talk about it, to teach it, but sometimes all that is WAY easier than  the doing of it.

I jumped head first into the Spirit-led life a lot of years ago, and I am STILL trying to do it without the training wheels! If only it was as easy as riding a bicycle. But it is not. And yet, while the climb up each of God’s mountains is rocky and steep, the view from the top is spectacular. Every time I hear someone talk about it, it spurs me on to go up again to reach that next higher mountain top. See, the thing is, there are many climbs up, on different paths. The Lord does the choosing once we have made up our mind to Go Up. The first time, He took me on a path that was not too difficult. It was lined with people along the way to cheer me on. It was like a marathon with stops where people would love me, water me, encourage me to keep going. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

Now, I am wiser and stronger in the Lord. There is no such thing as OLDER in Jesus! Your birthday number doesn’t matter to Him. He just wants each person of whatever age to live up to the abundant life He died to give them. So, at this stage in the game, some of us may be shocked to learn that there is no such thing as “retirement” in the Lord, no matter how many Retirement Villages we build!  For us, being a Christian is still our life’s work. For some, only now that we are “retired” we can go for it full time!

Walking in the Spirit, climbing the mountain with the Lord is uppermost in my mind, like it was in the beginning, when I was new in Him. I want more than ever to truly walk in His Spirit ALL the time. The story goes that two little boys noticed their grandmother reading her Bible. The younger one asked, “Why is Granny all the time reading her Bible?”  The older and wiser one said, “I think she’s cramming for her finals.”  I’ve reached a time in my life when I KNOW I’m  cramming for my finals. I want to get a few more things right before they pull the plug on me!

One might assume that being older, the tests would be easier. But our paths today have a degree of difficulty we never knew when we were young. It seems like those beginning climbs were more focused on our surroundings and circumstances. A lot of other people involved. While I still do those climbs, there is another kind of challenge that is even harder. It is like a mountain backpacking trip, away from everything, everybody. Just me and the Lord. He starts to climb up and calls me to follow Him.

This is the call to come up higher than I have ever gone before. This call puts the focus on ME. Not my brother, not my sister, but it’s ME, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer!  The Higher Call has happened to me more than once. It is always my choice to go or not. This time, it isn’t so much just getting through some big problem, having a mostly calm exterior. It is more about how I’m doing inside while I’m doing all the right things on the outside (There is no fooling God on this!) The Lord is shining His brightest light on my ATTITUDE. He is saying, “It isn’t enough to plaster a smile on and gut through these times with a lot of help from your friends. Now, you must have  Righteous Reality as you go through with Me.”   My friend Geri sums it up well:

Being a believer is no guarantee that a person will walk in the Spirit. Walking In the Spirit requires the crucifying of self, a moment by moment choice to give up our life.The true test of a person being filled with the Holy Spirit will not only be the fruit of the Holy Spirit:  love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control being manifested in a life (the character and nature of Jesus), but out of a person’s innermost being will be flowing rivers of living water — Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our hearts to God.    ~Geri McGhee

When Jesus saw many people gathering toward Him, He went up on the mountain side and sat down. His disciples came to Him and He taught them there.  Matthew 5:1

Today’s WSS is dedicated to my full-blood German sister that I love dearly. (You know who you are, kiddo!!)  Going up higher, you Proverbs Virtuous Woman you!

Charlene Reams Manning

Believer in the Lord Jesus Messiah

 

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