This is Faith to Witness 99 Motivating us to leave the 99 and go find the one. 

Here are three affirmations that travel well from this week’s episode. 

1. The Bible as the authoritative resource is not typically the way into a deeper conversation. 

This makes me nervous and feeling at a loss for words. When I claim God as the authority based on a book that someone has no connection to, for some people, there is no connection. 

2. A person’s perspective on his personal life is where my witness sits to listen.

There may be no mention of God, Jesus, a higher being, or some connection to the creation. My witness breathes through the listening.

3. My conviction is where my testimony starts.

My personal conviction is being called out here, to stand spiritually tall and testify in front of someone whose perception of God may not be an active agent in their daily life. 

1 Corinthians 2:14

14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

 

Stay with us for the conversation. e212

E212 The Knowing — The Spirit of Sharing My God 

(part 3 of 3)

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It’s come to this. Part 3, what I have privately called “the knowing.” My relationship with God. The knowing from a very early age about my need for salvation, redemption and life following Jesus. 

 My driving motivation during this series is that I can’t tell someone that if they dig deeper they will just “know” the truth about their Creator. The road we started down in e209 was to consider three of my personal roadblocks. In Part 1 I named my first roadblock: The personal, private nature of sharing our God. I am his, according to Psalm 139. I was “knitted in my mother’s womb.” I always have been. I am the image, the representation, as it is manifested in me—my personality, my soul—that God wants in front of every person he puts on my path. When I share God, whatever depth and breadth, with someone, I am honoring his work in me and illuminating his glorious image. Paul tells us in Colossians 3:10-12 that our new self is “being renewed in knowledge in the image of the Creator.” So, the Kingdom response to roadblock 1 is that my Creator will protect what we have together, he will protect me in his image. 

Check out Part I at this link in today’s show notes. (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faith-to-witness-99/id1648558274?i=1000792365969).

In Part 2, the second roadblock, I named the risk of sharing my God. You can check out e211 at the link in today’s show notes:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faith-to-witness-99/id1648558274?i=1000796288345

I shared that I get jealous of a person’s rebellion against his own spiritual destiny, that the person has not claimed the Creator who made him. Our God is a jealous God, that I come from a place of taking up the cross, and embracing a solid grip on the sword of truth. We considered that there are many people in our lives who have a strong grasp on how they are feeling, what they are thinking, what their human condition is, but have no enduring solutions because symptoms are not solutions. 

I came to this actionable affirmation: when I witness, two people bear testimony. I am not the only one with spiritual skin in the game. That person bears testimony about the relationship he or she has with God. How someone responds is not a reflection of my witness. My witness stands because salvation and redemption do not ever take the debate stage. Jesus has already won the argument. 

The world defines risk by the length of an earthly guarantee. It’s the only guarantee the world can offer. But God defines risk by the choice he gives us about our spiritual destiny. 

1 John 2:17

The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

When we invest in heavenly treasures and lay down what we treasure on earth to gain glory for our Creator, there is no risk. Because Jesus risked it all, when we witness, we risk nothing that will last in eternal life. We landed here:

• Relationships between believers will flourish in heaven forever. 
• Relationships between believers and nonbelievers will be resolved on earth. 
• Never-ending peace and joy will redeem the struggling emotions on earth.
• A conversation that went wrong rooted a mustard seed. 

I’m Kathryn Bise, your host. 

So, here I am, at the threshold of “the knowing.” I have to bear a witness that yields my free will to why God has put me in front of that person, at that moment. Here’s what has become clearer to me:

When I witness I am not sharing my perception of God. 

I am sharing my conviction from God. 

I am responding to his divine persuasion of my heart. 

 

What Do I Know About Spiritual Conviction?

The apostle Paul names the barrier we face in speaking with others. 

1 Corinthians 2:14

14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

This tells me I need to start or redirect a conversation with three affirmations:

1. The Bible as the authoritative resource is not typically the way into a deeper conversation. 

This makes me nervous and feeling at a loss for words. When I claim God as the authority based on a book that someone has no connection to, for some people, there is no connection. I can’t always start there, with authoritative quotes. And to those who may latch on to the Bible because it is a tangible, physical element in this world, there is also a spiritual danger.

A.W. Tozer, in his book, And He Dwelt Among Us, says: “Is Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, actually inside you? Have you been initiated into that other, that spiritual world, the kingdom of God? Are you in that kingdom? You can be, because what eating is to the body believing is to the soul. It will fix your gaze on Him who is the Bread of Life and keep you saying and believing, “Lord, I do believe; I trust thee; I am now trusting Thee.” That which is external will become internal. That which is in the text will get into your heart. That which is in the Bible will get into your soul. You can get up and say, “I know for myself that I know.” (Chapter 12, pg 201-202) 

The knowing I have always had lives within God’s Word. One hundred fold. As far as the east is from the west. But it didn’t start there. It started before the beginning of time as we know it.

2. A person’s perspective on his personal life is where my witness sits to listen.

Engaging someone to describe their state of mind, their current circumstance, their season, their life in general. What motivates, frustrates, worries, excites someone? There may be no mention of God, Jesus, a higher being, or some connection to the creation. My witness breathes through the listening.

3. My conviction is where my testimony starts.

How I experience God, Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit in my life. Experience my Creator, not a theological spew, or an ideological mantra. My personal conviction is being called out here, to stand spiritually tall and testify in front of someone whose perception of God may not be an active agent in their daily life. The power is in the personal nature of how God moves through me, moves through my day, a circumstance, a season. 

So how do I share my convictions about the knowing?

 

The Nature of the Knowing

Tozer touches on what I have come to know as my knowing. The two worlds Tozer is speaking of is the material world and the spiritual world. We live within both as being made in the image of God. 

He says, “We think about God as being infinitely removed on the outer edges of space. We think of our Lord Jesus Christ as having fled through the corridors of space, and He is now seated at the right hand of God. And all that is true. Certainly, He is seated at the right hand of God as our Advocate forever, our Savior by the throne of grace. But also remember that the mystery of God’s creation and presence the Persons of the Godhead are also with us, and the kingdom of God is close to us. It is not a matter of shouting across the spaces to a God far removed, you can whisper in your spirit to a God that indwells you if you are a Christian. It does not require sending a telegraphic message across the years and spaces to a God far removed. God can read our heartbeats. Our very mind is frail to God, and He touches it and knows what we are thinking. This is why we do not hear much about the coexistence of two worlds.” (Chapter 12, 191-192)

I can “whisper in my spirit to a God that indwells me” because God can read my heartbeat.” Maybe my “knowing” isn’t so private after all. Maybe when I am swept along in the river of His faithfulness it is possible that 

John 3:5

 

5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.

It is impossible for me to define the “knowing” without telling someone about how God met me at age 6, age 7, age 12 and as I entered my 20s as a third-year college student. Check out episode 31 for an example of how he communicated with my 7-year old self to know how the power of his Spirit teaches us about our place in God’s creation. When we are young God does it through the material world in ways we can connect to the Spirit that saves us.  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faith-to-witness-99/id1648558274?i=1000611569893

Tozer says this about the process of spiritual transformation:

“There is such a thing as eating the Bread of Life and knowing you are eating it. There is such a thing as looking in faith to that Bread that cometh down from above and getting it into you and having an inward spiritual religion and knowing for yourself that that which is divine has now come into you. There is such a thing as being assured in your own experience for yourself and not another. 

But you say, “I’m saved because the Bible says I m saved.” The Bible does not say you are saved. The Bible lays a condition down whereby you can be saved, but the Bible never tells any individual that he is saved. That cannot be done. God would have to write another Bible to say “John Jones believeth on me and is therefore saved.”  God does not write the assurance of your salvation in this book; He tells you how to be saved and then writes the assurance in your heart.”

Tozer tells us where God does the convincing, the convicting. In the heart.

 

Our Witness Comes From God’s Testimony

1 John 5:5-15

Faith in the Incarnate Son of God

5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 

Let’s stop here long enough to affirm that our witness comes from, starts with God’s testimony. 

10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

John goes on with several affirmations.

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

Jesus bore witness to his Heavenly Father on earth. When we believe and take in his sacrifice we take in his witness, and bear testimony to him through our surrender, salvation and redemption. 

 

My Pursuit of a Private Knowing is Resting Here

So, I come to an affirmation that gives me rest for a while, because God does that. It’s difficult to lay out where we are in how and why we do or don’t bear a stronger witness. Not knowing how to start, not knowing how to communicate things of the spirit to someone.

So, my fourth affirmation helps me rest in God’s spirit: 

The Spirit reveals to someone how God made the Psalm 139 me for his purpose in this material world, a world where we live for a while longer. 

Let this be the connection that continues the conversation. And I’ll keep whispering.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 

Humility is Deeply Personal

One final nugget: Tozer talks about “pluralizing our humility” as if to do it as part of some trend, some public movement, when it is deeply personal in nature. It is not meant to be a roadblock, it is meant to be the saving of a soul, one soul at a time. Tozer says, speaking of David in Psalm 51, “He singularized it; and if you will singularize your confession and say, “God it is I, it is I,” Christ will reveal Himself to you. And as you know Christ, you will know God.”

Humility is a solo act, soul to soul. You and Jesus. Me and Jesus. Me and someone. You and someone.

John 17:3 

3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

In this passage, John tells us it is all in the knowing, the knowing God. I have people in my life that want to have a closer relationship with me but are not passionately seeking God. Some live in a not-God reality. I don’t live in that world. So that’s a spiritual hike that doesn’t go far enough up the mountain for me. I want to climb to a higher spiritual altitude, but some people think they breathe better at a lower level. It’s just that, well, I can “whisper to the spirit within me” to embrace God at any point of the ascent.

I’ll lean harder into Jesus to share my conviction. I’ll try harder to share how God lays down his assurances in my heart. Because Jesus is the enduring solution to every symptom a human bears as the material world meets the spiritual world. 

Join me in pursuing what you have come to “know” because God is reading your heartbeat. Someone needs to hear how God does this in your life. Pick a couple of sheep on your path. Go find your next conversation with them.

And stay for our conversation as we finally return to the mustard seed, and this question: What happens when a mustard seed is planted in a person’s conscience? 

E213.

God’s faith to your witness. Go find the one.