Restoring the Simplicity of Jesus
I remember vividly the completion of a prior book I wrote called The Jesus Book . We were at a family dinner, and I was so excited to have finally finished a project that took me approximately eighteen months. As we were sitting at the table, one of my wife’s uncles said to me, “Michael, I heard you wrote a book. What’s it about?”
I looked up and simply said, “Jesus.” I’ll never forget his response because my heart broke for him.
He said in front of everyone, “Of course it’s about Jesus, but what’s it about?”
I looked back at him and said, “It’s just about Jesus, period.” I put my head down and continued to eat. I thought to myself, “How complicated some people have made the Christian life! Shouldn’t the Christian life be about Christ? I mean, after all, if He does not come, what do we have? Shouldn’t church be about the One who purchased the Church? Shouldn’t reading our Bible be about the One whom the Bible is about and the One who wrote it? Shouldn’t worship be about the One we’re worshiping? And shouldn’t prayer be about the One to whom we’re talking?” It was at that moment I realized that simplicity needed to flood our hearts again.
Do you remember when you met the Lord? That moment when He became real to you? You didn’t have theology or a Christian education, but you did have Jesus and you realized, “He’s all I really need.” You felt His presence, the presence of the Spirit, and instantly, His reality became everything to you.
For many, Christianity is about everything but the Person. It’s about dos and don’ts. It’s about weekly attendance in church. It’s about a specific devotional time. It has become political to some and about social justice to others. While all of these are good and beneficial—in fact, I highly recommend them—without the person of the Lord, Christianity is dead. In fact, without Him, there is no Christianity. If Jesus is not actually in the room by the Holy Spirit when we gather, we are not having Christian meetings. You may as well join a country club or some secret society because it is His presence—and His presence alone—that makes anything we do “Christian.” I’ve come to realize and believe wholeheartedly that the Christian life is the life of Jesus in us and through us by the Holy Spirit.
I felt like telling that family member, “No, you don’t understand. You’ve forgotten the simplicity of the Lord. With all my being, my heart breaks because I want you to come back to Jesus and Jesus alone.”
Struggle
I remember when I was backslidden and away from the Lord, certain sins gripped me. I struggled in my mind. I struggled in my ways. I fought and fought to be holy. I remember walking into church feeling guilty and ashamed week after week. My parents pastored a church. My dad would ask me to get up and pray, and I felt like garbage because I was bound with sin. When a temptation would come, I would wrestle against it and rebuke it. I would bind and loose. Oh, I had mastered what I thought was spiritual warfare, only to find out that the temptation would grow stronger and stronger, even when I warred against it. This is when I realized that whether I was fighting it or submitting to it, giving the struggle attention was fueling it. So, to simply war against it was only making it stronger. Then I began to experience the presence of the Lord. This was the game changer. All of a sudden, He would come my way, and the Holy Spirit would brush my heart and pull on the strings of my desire. I would give Him my attention. I would talk to Him, speak to Him, and worship Him, and He would distract me with His beauty. His presence became so overwhelming that I forgot about my struggles. As we tend to the presence of the Lord, our struggles die on their own.
Ezekiel 36:26-27 says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”
How many of us fight to keep the laws of God but lose these wars day after day because we don’t understand the ways of the Spirit? Following the Spirit, who is within us by default, causes us to walk in the laws of God. That is the beauty of the New Covenant. We call this the “law of life in the Spirit.” As you yield to the Holy Spirit, you join the life of Jesus, and Jesus Himself has fulfilled the law. Maybe you ask, “Michael, how can I be free from sin?” It’s very simple: give your heart and your attention to Jesus the next time the Holy Spirit asks you to. This is not an excuse to disobey the Scriptures; rather, it is the secret to obeying the Scriptures by simply looking to the Lord. So, what is the plan of God pertaining to your freedom? He will put His Spirit in us, and because His Spirit is in us, it will cause obedience to flow from within us, which is our deepest place, and this makes it simple to be an obedient child. There is a key to freedom that I would love to share with you, and it is this: True freedom is a Person, and your victory comes through His victory. When you fellowship with the person of the Lord, you connect with the victory of the Lord. His life becomes your life, and your life becomes His.
He’s Greater
It’s so vital to know who we are in the Lord, but it is much more vital to know the Lord. Today, there is a great focus on the identity/ grace teaching. Let me say clearly that I love the grace of God. It’s amazing and beyond comprehension. All we have is because of His grace. He found us. We did not find Him. Without His power and quickening we can do nothing. If you have accepted Jesus and are following Him, you are God’s child. It is sealed! I believe it is so important to know who we are in the Lord, but it is far more important to know the Lord. You and I become who we are called to be by staring at Jesus, not at ourselves. Let me reiterate: We must know who we are in Jesus, but that only happens by knowing Jesus. Manifesting sonship comes by staring at the Son, not at us. So, to understand our identity is amazing and needed. This comes only by knowing our Father’s face and voice.
The Bible teaches that we become what we worship. As the Scripture says, “They looked unto Him, and their faces were radiant” (see Ps. 34:5). That radiance speaks of the light and the fire of God. In other words, it’s the face of God that our face becomes like as we look at Him. We must remember that while we are sons and daughters, we experience true sonship by being led of the Holy Spirit. The Scripture says, “A s many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:14). To be led by the Spirit we must look to the Spirit because we can only be led by that which is in front of us. We can only follow that which we can see, feel, hear, and touch.
He Opens Our Eyes
Ezekiel 39:29 says, “I will not hide my face from [Israel] anymore; for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel.” When the Holy Spirit touches you, your eyes open. And what can you see? The face of God.
Do you remember what Paul said? “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:17-18). What do these verses mean? I’ve heard it said many times that they mean, “Well, the Spirit of the Lord is here. I’m free to do whatever I want.” That’s not what these verses are saying. God is telling us, number one, the Lord is that Spirit. That Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is not any spirit. He is the Lord. Number two: The Holy Spirit is not less than the Father and the Son. He is the Lord. Number three: There is a purpose of the presence of this Spirit—to bring liberty. Number four: The purpose of the liberty is to see the Lord as in a mirror. This is beautiful. This tells us that as we look at the Lord by the Spirit, His face permeates our face, changing our lives and our countenance into the face of Jesus.
Bob Gladstone from the Brownsville Revival said, “You cannot fake countenance.” How true that is. I’ve met many people who are powerful and anointed servants of God. I’ve met people who have shaken nations for decades. I’ve met dozens and dozens of leaders whom God has used greatly, but there have been a few who have been a cut above the rest. There have been a few who have marked me. I must say, the ones who marked me did not mark me with photos of large crowds. The fact that they were famous did not change me. The ones who marked me were the ones who had something intangible about them. It was undeniable. Even with their flaws it was unmistakable. Their faces were different. Their eyes were different. It was as though at times you were looking into the face of the Lord. It seemed like their countenance, their disposition, literally became a container for the character of God. Some of these people you’ve never heard of, and possibly you never will, but one thing I can assure you: they will be champions in Heaven. Their reward will not be fame and television time. It will be proximity to the throne of the Father forever. It will be a crown of glorious presence that rests upon them in the ages to come. These people had eyes of fire. These people had joy and brokenness wrapped into their countenance. These people were as bold as a lion but supple as a lamb. They’re hungry but content, needy but able to enjoy His presence. This cannot be faked. Whether on a platform or at home, the Lord seems to live in their face. Friend, this is true success. This is what the Holy Spirit does. This is what it means to become like the Lord.
Do you remember what the Scripture said about Stephen when he was martyred?
But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep (Acts 7:55-60).
The Scripture says, “He, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven” (Acts 7:55), and when he was done preaching and rebuking Israel, the Bible says that his face shone like an angel (see Acts 6:15). Do you know why? It’s because he gazed into Heaven. One thing happens when you’re full of the Spirit: Heaven becomes more real to you than anything around you. That’s why just before he breathed his last, Stephen said, “I see…the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:56). When the Holy Spirit overwhelms us and fills us, our first vision is of Jesus. Our heavenly home becomes our greatest reality until He changes our physical body. He’ll even change our speech. Think of how Moses became after being with the Lord. Do you remember that his face began to shine? Why? Because his face took on the nature of that which he was looking at (see Exod. 34:35). Or how about the disciples? Uneducated men who preached boldly. What did the Pharisees say about them? “They knew they had been with Jesus” (see Acts 4:13). Why do you think the Pharisees knew they had been with Jesus? Was it merely because of the content of their speech? I’m sure that was part of it, but there was something more. Their words were spoken in a certain way. There was a certain tone to their words that was unmistakable. You see, when the Holy Spirit begins to change your life, He won’t just tell you what to say; you’ll begin to say things the way God says them. You’ll begin to accentuate words in the way that the Lord would. So, God changes the filter and the topic. The filter is the heart. The topic is Jesus. When Jesus is preached with a purified heart, it just sounds different, and this is what the Pharisees noticed in those disciples. This is what the world is looking for: people whose faces begin to shine like Moses and Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, people who speak words in such a way that even those who are enemies of God say, “These men have been with Jesus.”
To simplify things again, my friend, drown out all the noise. Eliminate everything from the Christian life that has nothing to do with Jesus. Make it simple again. Begin to speak to the Holy Spirit, and ask Him to speak to you. If you don’t hear anything, just wait a little longer. And if you still don’t hear anything, then just wait another day. When you read your Bible, just talk to the Lord. Ask Him questions when you don’t understand something. Before you go somewhere on a trip, ask the Holy Spirit, “Should I go?” The Scripture says, “If we draw near to Him, He draws near to us” (see James 4:8). Simple dialogue with the Lord is what He’s looking for. After all, He is your Friend. Why don’t you talk to Him today?