Drawing Nigh (Part 7) – How the Ministries Work Together

Our God is grand, majestic, all powerful, pure, “cannot look upon sin”, “dwells in light unapproachable”.

It is not difficult to perceive of a God who is aloof, remote, untouchable, unreachable, “unapproachable” for all practical purposes. Our long-established views on some subjects strongly imply this — yet it is not so. With all His majesty, purity and power, God also desires to dwell with His faithful, to move into the very being of His children, to be a com­panion, guide and comfort to them, to have fellowship with them, without in any way com­promising His purity.

Our Father employs a number of methods of achieving this close relationship with His chosen ones, four of which have been discussed in this series. These four are His Word, His Election and Calling, His Angelic Ministration and His Spirit.

But any companionship, any friendship, any fellowship, cannot be a one-sided affair. The fellowship of believers with God involves re­sponses from both parties. So it is that our series has included two avenues by which we may respond to the drawing process that Our Father has begun in us — those of Prayer and of Fasting, two avenues we feel are less under­stood and less utilised than they should be. These ministries, by which God and men may draw nigh to each other, have been by no means exhaustively dealt with. But we trust that the articles were helpful to the brother­hood in our understanding of how God works among us and how we may respond to Him.

Putting The Picture Together

Each ministry that God employs achieves a different purpose. For example, the ministra­tion of angels works in one area of our lives, that of God’s Word in another area. But to obtain an overall conception of how God works with us we need to identify the various methods God employs; and then view them all together. If we should, for example, only recognise His work through His Word, then we are ignorant of His work through His angels and His Spirit and we only see a small portion of the picture. But even our keenest insight will only allow mortals such as us a dull reproduction of a glorious picture. “We see through a glass darkly.”

God’s election and calling is indicative of His will and purpose in saving grace applied to specific persons, according to His foreknow­ledge. God will not “cast His pearls before swine” and, being aware of the end from the beginning, many (not all) are called and few are counted as the elect of God. This is God’s selective process, and many of us, looking back, can see how it worked in our earlier life. In a changed form, it still does.

Standing foursquare astride the path to elec­tion is God’s Word — the gospel of salvation. For us it is expressed in the Bible. We may be called, but we are not the elect until we have mastered the test of faith in the name of Jesus which the Bible brings. But that is not the only encounter with God’s Word — it is the early trigger of faith for the called, and also ,the infallible continuing guide to life for the elect. God’s Word is always there, from beginning to end, the source of knowledge, the standards-keeper, the guide to life. It has a pre-eminent place in the life of a believer.

But working alongside the Bible message are two other influences in our lives that this series discusses — the ministry of Angels and the ministry of The Spirit, each with a different sphere of operations and working in parallel with God’s other ministrations.

The angels are sent forth by God as oper­ators of circumstances. They cause things to happen. They do the mechanical things. They destroy cities, bring plagues, arrange for people to meet, withstand kings, cause armies to be victorious or defeated. Scripture abounds with examples of their work. Two destroyed Sodom. One with sword drawn conducted the plague on Jerusalem. One organised the fog between the Egyptians and the Israelites at the Red Sea. One struggled against the Prince of Persia and had to get help. One stopped Balaam’s ass. One opened the prison doors and let the apostles out. One helped three faithful to survive the fiery furnace. Angels are instru­ments of achievement.

Their duties today are basically quite the same. The ministry of Jesus and the apostles replaced one feature of their work — that of visible messengers of God’s word — a function now performed by the Bible. But the angels’ duties in other respects have little changed. They cause things to happen, people to meet, make you miss the bus, arrange some acci­dents, see that some brother arrives in a mis­sion field just when he is wanted. They cause earthquakes, destroy towns, help Israelis to migrate to Israel, stop Arab armies in the Sinai, and quite probably had to send for help (cf. Dan. 10:13). They work for people, with people or against people by arranging circum­stances. BUT THEY DON’T WORK WITHIN PEOPLE — THAT IS

The Work Of God’s Spirit

When the calling has gone forth, and the Word has made its challenge, and the angels have done their first work, and the election has been made, then God can come and dwell, by His Spirit, in a vessel fitly prepared for His habitation. The indwelling of God by His Spirit is such a key doctrine, particularly in Ephesians, and elsewhere by repeated refer­ences, as to be undeniable. God seeks this relationship now and it is made possible by a pouring out of a measure of His Spirit upon His children. Thereby He dwells within them, comforts them, strengthens them, and, as Ephesians twice states, makes them powerful.

For what? Not to do miracles in a First Century sense; but that they might be able  to resist temptation, to enable prayer to be more efficacious, to have faith better strength­ened, to know better what to do for the best, to be more effective in preaching and serving; and, yes, having kept on reading and rever­encing God’s Word, to understand it better. This last work of the Spirit has always worked in a person called by God, from the moment he prayerfully picked up a Bible.

A Fourfold Parallel Work

What we have attempted to describe is the integrated result of a fourfold ministry of God with us. The reading of God’s Word imparts knowledge and His Spirit enables this know­ledge to become effective in understanding and application. The work of God’s Spirit is to work within our hearts and minds to change them and then He can come and dwell with us.

Long before we understand the full signifi­cance of the sacrifice of Christ, God’s Spirit begins to change our hearts and minds as we begin to read His Word and our faltering prayers ask for understanding. Angels work around us. We miss the bus to some evil influence. An accident forces on us a month’s quiet recuperation — time to meditate and read. We “chance” to meet a Christadelphian in the Outpatient’s Dept. Angels at work. God’s Word at work. God’s Spirit at work. The process of calling and election at work. The whole thing is separating a person from the evil world — a separating, holy work under the hand of God — God’s Holy Spirit at work.

A Continuing Process

If we should imagine that this process ceases once we are a baptised believer, we would be sadly mistaken. If anything, the parallel works intensify — if we allow them.

God calls us to greater tasks, no matter how limited or inexperienced we may be. Our election is promoted as we grow. Our study of His Word delves deeper into its jewels. The angels never cease to arrange happenings in our lives. The indwelling Spirit sharpens our understanding, purifies our heart and keeps the fellowship of God close. All our lives, if we will but perceive, we are being guided, tested, tried, protected, instructed, brought nigh by the processes we have chosen to call God’s “ministries” and described here.

Our Needs And Response

Who, at some time or another, has not suffered from that feeling of helplessness or despair? Who has not experienced that des­perate need to find God and be closer to Him? Where is there a community without some spiritual distress of some sort? Yet God’s bountiful work is close round us at all times. The difficulty sometimes is to know how to tap it when it’s needed most, how to cast our burdens on the Lord, how to draw nigh.

There are dozens of ways to tap spiritual fellowship; praise, songs, service, faith, medi­tation — enough for a long series of articles. Just two were chosen for urgent reconsidera­tion — prayer and fasting.

There are more than enough Scriptural pas­sages both to define and to commend such practices and to describe their usage. Yet neither prayer nor fasting is fully practised in Christadelphian circles as Scripture recommends. Copious references have already been referred to in previous articles in this series.

Special purpose prayer, group prayer and national prayer are features of the Bible, yet an innovative community-wide day of prayer proposed by Bro. Harry Whittaker in ‘The Christadelphian’ recently was finally shelved after cool remarks in the correspondence columns. A day nominated by the A.C.C. and suggested as a world-wide day of prayer for Witness ’76 has appeared as an undistinguished note crowded in with many others, easily over­looked. We could not be classed as a people given to prayer!

Fasting is a quite clearcut and specific prin­ciple in Scripture, which when properly per­formed, draws blessings from our Father. It is expounded by Jesus and was practised by the First Century ecclesias. Furthermore, specific examples were pointed to in Scripture where God did not respond to prayer until it was accompanied by fasting. If we were a community without big prob­lems, then perhaps there would be an excuse for ignoring a Scripturally recommended ser­vice to God. We are not. It therefore seems urgent that we should consider employing a mode of calling on our Heavenly Father that pleases Him and for which there is an infallible recommendation. At the time of going to press, we are happy to be informed of the first fasting for spiritual reasons in our com­munity, of which we are aware, and of its happy results.

We content ourselves here with repeating one example from Scripture. God’s initiation of Paul’s missionary journeys came out of the elders engaging in group prayer and group fasting (Acts 13:1-2). Could not our preach­ing and mission work be much more effective if we too, followed that example?

The Challenge

We have by no means exhausted the ways by which we may draw near to God, nor the methods God employs to draw us to Him. But perhaps this query has relevance. Can we, as individuals, or a community, fully appre­ciate or fully experience the work of God in drawing nigh to us, when we hold back in drawing nigh to Him? Perhaps we have touched on an essential reason why we still have a way to go in appreciating the work and the indwell­ing of God’s Spirit. As we learn to pray as much as we talk, in public as well as private, as we grow to experience as many prayer meetings as we do committee meetings, as we fast as much as we feast, we, as a spiritual consequence, will also grow in grace and favour and broaden our view and experience of God’s work with us and in us.

Note Paul’s benediction which he guaranteed to the true church THROUGHOUT ALL AGES (v.21), “Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.” (Eph. 3:20-21).