Getting what you’ve always gotten.

"Do what you have always done, and you will get what you have always gotten."

This isn't a new or revolutionary statement, but rather a quote that seems to be "new" in every generation and yet there is a lot of rubber on the road from the miles that this very saying has proven itself to be true over and over again.

It is a true message for both the affairs of this world but also spiritually as well. If you want to see a move of God in your life and you want the personal revival that every Christian wants to walk in, then it is always good to look at what we are doing or not doing in our pursuit of God.

If our days are filled with very little prayer, if we are rarely seeking God in His Word, our testimony has all but dried up with the people around us at work or at school, and fellowship...then yah, it's not really about God anymore but a whitewashed version of all the same things the world is in to...and....that has become our lifestyle! Then we will most likely walk in all the same things we have been walking in for all the years we have chosen to live this way, no fire, reletivly little growth, and living in a secret dissapointment that we havent seen God come through for the things we had origionally believed Him for while finding His presence is like walking in a desert and every now and then finding a small oasis that dies up in just a few days. In that kind of condition it is not at all uncommon for friends and family all around you to be suffering a quiet death to their faith as well, and yet without any real fire going on we just learn the "grace" to let them die quietly, unchallenged, and unaddressed.

Typically in this condition we will walk around, and around, and around the same mountains, deal with the same strongholds, fight all the same battles, and continually seek a fire that never seems to manifest longer than a few days. But what are we doing to go after God with our full heart? Have we put aside everything to follow Him? Is He our goal and our purpose?

In Revelation 2:1-7 In this passage of scripture you can see Jesus Himself speaking to the Church at Ephesus (The same church that Paul wrote the book of Ephesians to). In this passage you can see that a Church can be doing every good thing, and that they are even able to access and judge correctly concerning false Apostles.

And yet they risked being removed as a Church by God for the one thing God had against them, which was that they had left their first love (they had gotten the commandments mixed up). They were doing lots of good things and it looks like they were loving each other and not tolerating evil But they had compromised their relationship with God as their "first love"to which Jesus calls them to "repent" because they have "fallen" and He even says, "Do the deeds you did at first." Somehow those "deeds” were the things that were in allignment with their first and formost relationship with God.

Also in Revelation 3:14-22 we can see the Church of Laodicea who viewed their realationship with God to be good because they were financially blessed which to them was a sure sign of Gods approval of their life. But Jesus says that they are "poor, blind, miserable, and wretched"...Maybe Jesus needs to learn how to be more positive and uplifting....maybe He isn't very loving, or needs to learn about mercy from us humans...arrrrgh! Of course not, Jesus was speaking the truth so that the Church could turn, repent, get right with God, and walk in Gods presence again! He litterally told them that they were lukewarm in their faith and unless they changed He was going to "spew them out of His mouth." Which is an act of contempt for something one finds tasteless or disgusting! But He offered them to respond to His knocking at their door, and to invite Him in (I thought they already did that?). And then He would come into them and litterally make a home with them, in otherwords the presence of God would be found in the Church.

I want the presence of God continually with me and to continually be manifest in the Church. But if I start to see a pattern that has me walking in spiritual death continually, if I am apart from God in my daily dealings with this world, if my prayer time is stagnet, my time in the Word mechanical, then I cannot stay in that place or I will get the expected result. And the same is true for the Church.

* The little deal with the devil that causes spiritual death and the toleration of it.

We have to stop making a deal with the devil. And that deal is, "you leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone."

In other words "I wont challenge you or come against you if you leave me alone and let me live my life without coming against me."

But no true Christian following Jesus with His full heart will live his Christian life without opposition from the devil, in fact the only "Christian" life that will not recieve opposition is one that is not a threat to the Kingdom of darkness. As Paul said in 2 Timothy 3:12, that "Indeed, all who want to live in a godly way in Christ Jesus will be persecuted."

As I am wrapping up this long winded blog post I will say two things, or rather reiterate them. Number one, if we want what we have always gotten, then just do what we have always done. Which is not always a bad thing. If you are on fire for God and passionatly burning for him then you probably don't want to change a bunch, and honestly it isn't much of a secret as to what you are doing at that point.

And number two, do not pacify the enemy of your soul by quitely agreeing to back off spiritually. Dont have mercy for things in your life that God does not have mercy on Himself. Do not allow spiritual death overtake you and then say it is the "grace" of God that allows you to stay in a spiritual state of slumber.

i mean, it can get so bad that we end up coddling demons in ourselves and each other, pacifying one another that our weak stance against the enemy is actually love....arrrrgh!

If you are in a place like I have been many times before of walking in a place of spiritual death and you are tired of it, it is most likely time to change what you have been doing and what you have been accepting. it is a time for getting up in your spirit and going after God with everything you have, while putting aside every distraction (Hebrews 12:1-3 & 2 Timothy 2:4). Its time for new habits and going after God as a lifestyle, consider Daniel who prayer three times a day with his window open...He saw the lions den but was spared and then he was placed at the right hand of Kings because of his wisdom.

After a season of walking with God with a full heart and seeing the fire on our life. Then to say, "If I want to get what I am getting, just keep on doing what I am doing!"

Daniel Paul