13.2 The Dilemma of Scarcity
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The more I consider being filled with all the fullness of God, Father in me inside of Jesus who fills my heart with His glory and the overflowing rivers of Spirit always flowing out of me, the more I am stunned and horrified by the absence of God, and even worse, of Jesus, in the minds and hearts and words of most of my Christian brethren.
To worship a ‘God’ faraway is to worship what cannot be God. Nicene Christianity is practical atheism. God faraway and salvation someday is practical atheism. “After you die, you will meet your Maker and Judge.” Do you see the open hostility against God in these words, placing death as a barrier against a God who fills all things.
Let Not God Speak
Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. Then they said to Moses, “You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” And Moses said to the people, “Do not fear; for God has come to test you, and that His fear may be before you, so that you may not sin.” So the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was (Exodus 20:18-21).
The only normal human is a human filled full with all the fullness of God. All twisted humans insert everything and anything in-between themselves and God.
Three Barriers
All human religiosity is found here: “You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” It seems our brethren will place anything they can find in-between themselves and God filling them with Himself.
The Bible, death, and human performance are the three biggest barriers. “I tried to obey you and failed, God, that should be enough to keep You from filling me with all of Your fullness.” “As long as I am not dead, God, You cannot fill me with all that You are.” “The Bible says my heart is evil, God, so You have no business filling me full and overflowing from me.”
Agur
Agur the son of Jakeh considered himself to be the stupidest man alive. He said, “I don’t know anything about God.” “What is God’s name, and what is His Son’s name, if you know?” he asks. Then he says “Don’t put words in God’s mouth that God does not speak.”
I like Agur; we share a similar approach to thinking.
The leech has two daughters—Give and Give! There are three things that are never satisfied, four never say, “Enough!”: the grave, the barren womb, the earth that is not satisfied with water—and the fire never says, “Enough!” (Proverbs 30:15-16). Doesn’t this sound like most Christian praying?
The Leech
Not enough, not enough, not enough. Do you see the nightmares of hades in these words?
A leech sucks blood, but the blood it sucks is never enough. It births children who demand more blood, but the blood they demand is never enough. “I’m just a sinner, ‘saved’ by grace.” The Blood is not enough. The Blood of Jesus not enough for us is where all the horror of Christian hades begins.
Look at these words, “What can wash away our sins, nothing but the Blood of Jesus.” Yet we sang them believing that the Blood was not enough, that we always had to be coming back for more, sin, sin, sin, not enough, not enough, not enough.
The Grave
The grave comes next. Death is never satisfied; death always cries for more.
I was presented with this opening line in a message on Facebook, a brother, attempting to preach “the gospel” to me. “WE HAVE ONE LIFE TO LIVE. You and I and everyone has to die once, then face the consequences.” Yes, I do have only one life to live, His name is Jesus, and He and I together are absolutely alive. My life dies no more.
The cross is not enough; the cross is not enough; the cross is not enough – you still HAVE TO DIE!!! God cannot fill you full because your sin cries for more Blood; God cannot fill you full because Death is still not satisfied.
The Barren Womb
It does get worse, though, this nothingness that seems to be everything, the dilemma of a “scarcity” that cannot exist. After the cry for more and more death, the barren womb cries, “The resurrection is not enough. Jesus is far away, far away, far away from me. Oh, I cannot bring forth life. The resurrection is not enough for me.”
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God (2 Corinthians 5:17-18a). And the barren womb cries, “Not enough, not enough, not enough. Create in me a clean heart, Oh God, but You didn’t, but You didn’t, but You didn’t.”
Not Enough Water
The majority of the Christians I know believe that I have been taken by the deception of the evil one because I believe that I possess a new heart filled with all the glory of Jesus and because I believe that the old heart is gone forever, held inside an empty grave that is ALWAYS more than enough.
Agur writes like me, however. He starts with one that becomes two, then he says three, then four, but he ends up with five!
The earth that is not satisfied with water. And we turn, now, to our charismatic brethren, as they plead with God, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” Never enough; never “out of my belly flow rivers of living water.”
Not in Human Flesh
The flesh, the flesh, the flesh. No flesh can ever birth life. There is not enough water in God to cause my flesh to bring forth Christ. That’s really the rejection of God – human flesh as it exists right now CANNOT be filled with all the fullness of God.
There is not enough water, come, Holy Spirit, come upon us again. Please, please, please. I have watched those who have experienced the rivers of Spirit flowing in the church and the anointed gyrations they must put on in front of their audience in order to get the river flowing once again. In my first Assembly of God experience at age 19, the show was more than sad. Not enough, not enough, not enough.
A Never-Satisfied God
But the final dissatisfied customer is the biggest. Fire – God Himself. God, You cannot fill me with all that You are BECAUSE You are not satisfied with me.
You demand obedience, God, and I do not measure up, so curse me, God, curse me, curse me, curse me. You are the one, God, who says to me, over and over, “Not enough, not enough, not enough.”
This was the scenario on the mountain, a Fire demanding of the children of Israel what they could never produce. Yet this false definition of God (not God revealing Himself, but the human response) was Adam’s choosing to eat of a universe that cannot ever be enough.
The Horror of the Abyss
I read a Christian ministry who said, in practicing the presence of God, that he pauses every few minutes and says, “Is this Your will, God, is this what You want me to do.” Then he made this claim: “It is clear that Jesus walked in this way.”
And all I could see was the horror of the abyss. A Fire that is not and never can be satisfied. Not enough, line yourself up again. Not enough, line yourself up again. Not enough, line yourself up again.
I can promise you this: Jesus did NOT walk in this wicked way. Jesus walked in the full and certain knowledge that being filled with Love, being filled with all the fullness of God, was more than enough for Him to guide His every step.
“Not Quite Right”
I want to share with you excerpts from a review on Amazon. This review is from a “Pshdsa” regarding a text by Madame Guyon, Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ. My own comments are in brackets [].
“At first glance, Madam Guyon seems to lead us into a deeper walk with the Lord… However, as you follow her in this book, the warning bells start going off. …something is not quite right… …the book is not about faith and dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ who is risen and at the right hand of God [a Jesus far away from us] – that Jesus she does not recognize. Instead she teaches to look inside yourself, and you will find a Jesus inside you, united with your inner self, a different Jesus…
“She does not believe in the transcendent God… but … it was this strange doctrine of finding God inside us, not outside of us. She says that we cannot find God until we start searching within ourselves, because God is not outside of us; God is inside us.
“These occult beliefs clearly show she has diverted from the straight and narrow. She believed she had reached union with God and had all wisdom with that union… No wonder I felt more and more uncomfortable reading this book, until I could read no more. This is not God at all. How easy to be fooled by this book. Subtly deceiving.”
Paul the New Ager
Madame Guyon, of course, did not come close to the occult beliefs and teachings of the Apostle Paul, the original teacher of a different Jesus.
His Spirit in the inner man [the inner self], that Christ [Jesus, Himself in Person] might live IN your hearts through faith… that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. These are truly “occultic” and “new age” concepts, very much ANOTHER Jesus.
Paul’s new age rantings went much further, of course, God fills all in all – God works all in all. And, as Pshdsa pointed out, Paul warned us so clearly against “his own” deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.
Blind and Ignorant
I’m sure you realized I was being facetious in the previous little bit; sometimes satire drives the truth home more than any other device. And how I want to drive this truth all the way through myself, and hopefully you as well.
We have hardly scratched the surface of a meaningless and non-existent scarcity; yet it has no surface, for it is not. We have wandered around inside of all the abundance and fullness of God Almighty, blind and ignorant, deaf and without smell or feeling, crying in feeble unbelief in the midst of all overflowing plenty, “Not enough, not enough, not enough,” as if that mindless cry is the only thing real.
Jesus Not Enough
Distill Pshdsa’s explanation of the correct “Christian” God down to its essence and you will find this claim. The ONLY real God is a God far away from me. And the only REAL Jesus is a tiny, limited, and confined Jesus, way over there somewhere. Paul lied – there is no God inside of me.
I plan to use that review in one of the first courses in my Bible Studies Masters program on Symmorphy, and I will include a list of each New Testament statement that puts God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit inside of us. You see, when push comes to shove, everyone says, “BUT, Jesus is ‘coming back,’” and the Word God speaks is not enough.
The Source of All Things Good
The truth is, however, that the place where I really want to lay out for myself, and you as well, how the scarcity of my own soul, my own self story, the words and conversation of my human consciousness, is to be erased is in the next lesson. Living in Abundance.
You see, we come to know the complete mindlessness of every manner in which scarcity cries, “Not enough” by seeing how we apply the overflowing more-than-enough of our Father upon every particle of our lives and thinking. Knowing Father as more-than-enough is NOT the Buddhist nonsense of “not wanting anything.” Rather, it is the incredible knowing that the source of all things good is in our belly.