Dedication Part 4: Dedication fulfilled

Dedication finds its fulfillment in the placing or positioning that God gives it. And this fulfillment of dedication in God’s positioning will be in power. This power comes from God. We must not try to position ourselves as we see fit, nor must we even try to use our own strength to succeed in this positioning. It is no energy of our own and none of our own strength for God is going to position and place us and he is going to give us all the energy and power.

Romans 12:4-For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function,

We are placed or positioned as a member in a body of Christ. In this very place, we find our positioning and anointing of the power for all our dedication.

Many times, we often waste our time doing good things or helpful things, but it is not really according to what God really wants. There must be a whole new set of priorities. Dedication must be according to what God is after, the fulfillment.

We are initially in Adam’s family tree. How does God move us out of Adam and move us into Christ? God’s way of taking us out is that he wraps the whole family of Adam and carries us to the cross in his son. When God looks down on the cross, he sees his lovely son Jesus. But he also sees something else: The whole wretched family of Adam, wrapped up and nailed to the cross in Christ. Jesus is called the last Adam. God sees nothing good out of Adam’s race. Hence, he gets rid of the whole family, all the thoughts, the imaginations, the intents of the heart. He wraps entire race in his son and nails it to the cross. Then he buries it in the tomb and says that is the last of Adam, the last Adam.

So when God looks down, he sees us in his son. When Jesus was buried in the tomb, we were buried in him. When he rose from the grave, we rose. When God the father has poured out the spirit upon his son, upon the head, we also get a glimpse that the holy spirit’s outpouring comes upon the head plus the whole of the body.

How do we get from Adam into a position in Christ? How to we move from one family to become a member of the body of Christ?

We must look at it from God’s viewpoint. The moment an individual comes by faith to look to Calvary, to what Jesus has done, God puts us into a position in the body. But God recognizes that what the great majority of people would only get is by bits and pieces. For example, an individual comes to Christ says ‘Thank you Lord for dying for me!’, how much does he know of all of this and how much does he experience of it in reality? The reality of it comes just according to the measure of it as he has apprehended and God appropriates the precious blood. God looks and sees the whole thing, but what we see is according to the apprehension that by simple faith we say ‘Thank you Lord for dying for me!’

Our problem is not just that we need to be redeemed or saved from the things we have done, but God needs to deal with something in our lives, our self. We begin to cry out, ‘Oh, wretched man that I am! Lord, I’m tired of plucking fruit off the tree all the time. Lord, isn’t there something else, something better?” Yes, there is. He must look back to Calvary again.

When we born, we were born crucified, but all we knew was that we were born. When we were born, we were there on the cross. We saw Jesus dying for us. But as we look back again, we see that he not only died for us. He died as us. We died in him.

There at Calvary, we see God’s remedy of the old life. It is a blessed day when we realized that he buries the whole wretched mess in the tomb.

So much of the time, we try to dedicate something of the old as if it though God could use it. The old creation cannot please God. It is impossible. God has placed the old Adam life in the tomb. But there is a rising from the grave. We have been crucified, buried together and now we rise together with him.

For years, we can be so caught up emphasizing that Jesus died for us and we died for him, but we still haven’t got out of the grave. We must not only come to know that we have all the negative works dealt with but now, we live by his life. That is a whole new apprehension! We are a failure. It is impossible that we can live a Christian life. We can only live by the life of the son of God. We can understand this, but most importantly, we must come to the living appropriation of Jesus Christ as our lives. God sees it as all done, finished. Here we are resurrected. Not only resurrected to move around as we wish, but he is going to position us.

After being a partaker of his life, we then begin to discover that our lives have some restrictive aspects. It is not just life in us. The life of the son of God works in a certain way. We cannot live this life just for ourselves. This life brings us into the relatedness of others. So we enjoy being with the company of the Lord’s people because we are part of a body.

1 Corinthians 12:11-For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

We are planted into the body of Christ and baptized into the body and we are made to drink of one spirit.

Our dedication in fulfilling the thing that God really wants is the realization that we are a member, a member in the body of Christ.

Dedication Part 3: Dedication Proved

Romans 12:2-And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.There is a lovely twofold proving that goes on. God says ‘Prove me!’ or ‘Try me!’ and when we prove the Lord, we are the ones who are likewise proved.

There are 3 different aspects in which the proving comes about:
1)The Promise
2)The Proving
3)The Possessing

As we come into renewed knowledge and our longing is more and more with real dedication unto the Lord, we get a hold of the blessedness of some of the promises the God has made. We often get the Promise and the Possessing mixed up. We may think about every single promise being ours, but how about the reality of the promise being brought out.

In Genesis, God brought Abram out of the land of the Chaldeans and made a promise that Abram’s descendents would be more than the stars of the sky and the sand on the seashore (Genesis 15:5). Abraham was thrilled with the promise that God has made. But he went through a long period of proving. Finally, through Isaac, he came to possess a son. And when Abraham wants to continue his family through Isaac, God commands Abraham to kill his son. Abraham proved God by obeying God’s commandments to kill his son, Isaac. This is the proving. And in return, God proves himself by offering also his begotten son, Jesus Christ, for our sacrifice.

Deuteronomy 6:1-”Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it,

God is giving the Israelites a promise, that he is going to give them a land to possess. God has brought them out of slavery in Egypt, in order to bring them into the Land. If God has brought us out of bondage and we present ourselves to him, he will bring us in.v2- so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God, to keep his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.

v3-”O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in the land flowing with milk and honey.

Why can’t God immediately just go and let us possess a thing? It is a law in human nature that we cannot get certain things without proving them.

v5-”And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

The proving that takes place here is the taking of a new heart and making it wholehearted before the Lord. When we were redeemed, God gave us a new heart. But there is a vast difference before a new heart and a wholeheartedness before the Lord.

God’s desire was not so much in giving the land to Israel. The land was incidental. He was wanting to, in the land, give them himself. That is his true desire.But when Israel got into the land and possessed it, they used the land for themselves, for their own interest. The land was so good and wonderful that over a period of 490 years, seventy sabbaths, they fail to let it lie idle. But they were not careful and used it for themselves. They were still in the proving stage. So the Lord allowed Babylon and Assyria to keep them in captivity for 70 years.Jeremiah 29:10-13-For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years have been completed for

Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you, to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart.The proving work, then, is to develop a wholeheartedness within us.

There is something the Lord requires of our wholeheartedness in our life. Our dedication unto the Lord, for the full thing that he wants, is that our place is set and we learn to live in our will that God gives to us.

Sadly, the great majority of God’s children live in the fickleness of their feelings. One day we may feel good and on another we might feel something else. We can go to a meeting, get all stirred up with fire and say, ‘I will serve the Lord’. Three hours later, we are away from the climate and the fickleness of our feelings come in. And our will is a captive of our feelings. We must come to hate the fickleness of our feelings.

We must pray for God to help us to know what it means to say ‘I will’. The will must be present and God will do the performing. We must will to be proved. We must will in our wholeheartedness to be brought to real proving. It is the heart that is proved.

The proving will bring about the possessing. God will bring us out, to bring us in.

So many of God’s children think that they have the possession just because they have the promise. It is as good as saying we have the knowledge but we don’t live in the reality of what we know. Deuteronomy 6:16-You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested Him at Massah.

When does the proving slip away from proving to testing? What is the difference between proving and testing? God wants us to prove, but when does it become a tempting to God?

Tempting God is demanding or requiring of signs from God that is greater than he is pleased or willing to give.

Psalms 78:41-And again and again they tempted God, snd pained the Holy One of Israel.

Psalms 78:17-22-Yet they still continued to sin against him, to rebel against the most high in the desert. And in their heart they put God to the test by asking food according to their desire. Then they spoke against God. They said, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? Behold, he struck the rock, so that waters gushed out, and streams were overflowing. Can he give bread also? Will he provide meat for his people? Therefore the Lord heard and was full of wrath, and a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also mounted against Israel; because they did not believe in God and did not trust in his salvation. It is the spirit in which we approach God that draws the line.

God will be very patient with our reasonings. There are times when questioning is legitimate. It is proper to reason with God like Gideon.

Is our spirit in which we approach God a murmuring or complaining spirit? God is very severe against a rebellious spirit. He will be patient as long as it is a questioning, if we just want to be sure if his is right. We have to watch our spirits. There is that rashness that comes out of the moment where our spirits is wrong, asking greater of a sign that God is willing to give.

God is not only doing the transforming work of the soul, to bring our minds into renewing, but God in the proving of our hearts gets down to the innermost, the proving of our spirit, the hidden man within our hearts.

Exodus 17:1-Then all the congregation of the sons of Israel journeyed by stages from the wilderness of Sin, according to the command of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink.

At this point, the sons of Israel were there according to God’s will. God had brought them there. But it seems strange that there was no water for the people to drink. Why did the Lord lead them to a place where there is no water?

We all start out with the mentality that when we come to know the Lord everything is going to be all right from then on. It is true, but we need a renewing of our knowledge.

The Israelites were in God’s will, the very centre of it, but how could they be in God’s will and come to a no-water situation?

We would easily question immediately whether we are in God’s will if we were to be placed in such a situation e.g no job, no money, no friends, nobody understands. But we are actually still in God’s will.

God wants to prove to them that they will get through the wilderness and it will be by God as their supply.
The whole of our dedication is not seeing what needs to be done and doing it by ourselves. What God ends is to be done by his name, not our names.

The first blessed part of the proving is no water, in the will of God. Do not think that just because difficulty comes, we must have missed the will of God.

v2-3- Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water that we may drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord” But the people thirsted there for water; and they grumbled against Moses and said, “Why now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”

There is a wrong spirit within them. God did not bring them out to kill them. They have not understood the claiming of the promise. He brought us out, to bring us in.

God wants us to step out, to take a promise. We can play it safe, stay back and say we don’t have any promises and no proving. It is a lot easier to do so. But we will miss out on the wonderful promises of God. God will tell us to come to him out of our cautiousness. He wants to prove our hearts and give us an opportunity for our hearts to be prepared for us to be brought into our possession that he has for us.

Dedication Part 2: Dedication according to knowledge

In Acts 21:20-21: And when they heard it they begin glorifying God: and they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law; and they have been told about you, that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children more to walk according to their customs.In this account, we can see how the Jews believed in the gospel. And yet they are like before, not changed in their thinking. They still go back to following the Law of Moses. This is so relevant to us today. Many christians are also zealous and on fire for God and want to serve God with all their hearts. But the sad fact is, they no not how. They have the wrong understanding of service and ultimately their efforts are put to waste. Hence, what is important is that we have to be changed, our minds have to be renewed. God will bring us into this renewed mind of Romans 12:2 if we are first willing to dedicate ourselves to him.

Romans 10:1,2: Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.

Again, here we can see that the Jews had a zeal for God but a zeal without any knowledge.

Once God has brought us back and we have experienced his mercy, we come into the crisis of dedication. After which, God then takes us along a new way, which is the renewing of our minds and transformation.

This is how we should dedicate our lives to God:

2 Timothy 3:16: All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

The scriptures are profitable for doctrine, to keep one from going offtrack. As we move along, God will reproof us through the scriptures. It is also a correction to bring us right back to him.

Proverbs 1:22-25: “How long, o naive ones, will your love being simple-minded? And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing and fools hate knowledge?
“Turn to my reproof, Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you; I will make my words known to you.
“Because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention;
And you neglected all my counsel and did not want my reproof;

This is exactly what God wants to say to us: turn to his reproof.

In Proverbs 5:1-12, it tells us of all the pitfalls of immorality. When we fail to accept reproof, this is what would happen. We will lose our honour, be looked upon with disdain and others will take all that we have. Our flesh would only bring corruption and death ultimately.

God desires a God-ordered life in all of us. He has set in our body a certain order that we need to follow. And if we follow his order, our lives would be blessed. Otherwise, Proverbs 5:1-12 would happen to us. But when we dedicate ourselves to the Lord, there is a discipline that comes with it.

Our problem is that we do not like the guardrails that God set for us. We want freedom. In the period of the Law, God was gracious to people. Today, on the period of grace, there is also law. There is always grace and law since the beginning of time. The Law is always given for the lawless. But God’s railway is to take the outward Law and write it into our hearts. This is being led by the spirit of God. As we are led by the spirit, we do not need any outward Law, but the guardrails that the spirit set for us to follow.
Many times we often want to please the Lord, but we still also want to please ourselves. This cannot be the case if we have dedicated our lives to God. After dedication, our lives should solely belong to him, we cannot take back what we have given him.

As we begin a life of dedication, our conflict comes inwardly as to whether we are knowing what it is to please the Lord and when we are led by the spirit.
This new way of dedication must not be simple a new way, but a living way. God is bringing us more and more into living it, but it requires much patience for others who are still learning as we grow together in Christ.

One of the problems with our dedication is that when God redeems us, he tkaes us out of Adam( the old man), nails us to the cross with Jesus (the new man) and when Jesus rose, we rose with him also.

We cannot dedicate our old lives to God or our old man to God. The only thing that we should do to our old man is to nail it to the cross and let it die. Only that which comes forth from the grave or that which is resurrected (the new man), can be dedicated to God and presented as a living sacrifice.

2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature or creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

It is very much a misconception to many. We don’t and can’t dedicate a talent or any ability to God, not even our musical talents to play musical instruments or sing during a worship service. Because, those are from our old man, which should be in the grave. In the tomb, God brings everything down to zero and we all start from scratch. When we are out of the grave, it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. God will lay aside our natural talents and abilities.
We should not be surprise if our natural abilities are waning, because the old things have passed away and new things have come. In Leviticus 14:14-18, when the priest applies blood, it refers to life in the blood which is a God-filled life, the blood that separates and brings us into resurrection. The oil placed over the blood signifys that the only thing God uses is that which is resurrected, which is from the new man and not the old man. The oil speaks of the holy spirit, which is for anointing.

Very often, we base our satisfaction on our talents and abilities, be it a musical talent or sports talent. But God wants our satisfaction to come only from him. Man can pick their natural ability and use it for their satisfaction, but on resurrection ground, God only anoints our love of God alone. He doesn’t anoint our natural talents which are part of the old man.

Hence, we must always look back at Calvary. Dedication works through the cross. It is according to this renewed knowledge that God gives us. This should be how we should dedicate our lives to God.