Dale Cresap's blog

Do you find your security in me? Yet you seek employment to produce an income. Do you see your job as a part of my provision for you? I want you to distinguish between me as your primary source of security, and the secondary sources through which I provide it. Otherwise you can make an idol out of something that I see as a means to an end. You can hold these methods I use to provide for you with a loose grip and still do your work with due diligence, for my word also teaches you that you are really working for me. In this manner you can take a transcendent view of both the work you do and my provision for you. 

Dancers stretch to improve their flexibility for graceful movement and to avoid injury. Stretching can be uncomfortable but many people do it intuitively in spite of this for the same reasons. Do you understand that there are spiritual and emotional versions of stretching as well? The experiences of life can disturb your comfort level and challenge you to be more open, tolerant, and accepting. This also will give you flexibility to be graceful and avoid injury in another sense. This type of stretching is painful in a different way, but if you understand the great value of these things you will seek it out deliberately to obtain their benefits. 

Do you see your faith as a journey? Has following me ever given you a sense of dislocation from the comfortable and familiar? You may find this disturbing and think that you are out of my will, but there is a Biblical precedent for this as a necessary step in your spiritual development. When I called Abraham it was to move away from familiar surroundings. Jacob and David fled for their lives after I called them, and Joseph was taken away against his will. You can be too comfortable where you are. Don’t be in distress when I call you to move on from your routine, but expect it as a normal part of my pattern for your spiritual growth. 

Are you eager for revival? Does it seem to be a long time in coming? You can learn a lesson from your garden. If you want produce in the fall you have to start early preparing the ground, and then plant, and then water and pull weeds all season. All this effort takes place in advance with nothing tangible to show for it. The harvest season is short and comes at the end. My word uses many agricultural metaphors as illustrations to underscore the parallels. You understand this process in nature and don’t fight against it. I want you to understand that it is just as valid in the spiritual realm that you may patient and diligent to do the work now to have a harvest later. 

Do you know anyone who responded to the gospel message on their first exposure to it? This can happen, but it is rare. Most people aren’t prepared to make a total life commitment to something the first time they encounter it. Were you? My word makes provision for this in saying that one plants and another waters but God gives the increase. Learn from this simple illustration with plants. Discern the spiritual state of those you encounter and meet them where they are to advance my redemptive work in their lives. Blessed are those who are equipped to minister at every level of spiritual growth. 

How good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity. You can think of examples of how brothers are lifelong friends, or enemies. How pleasant the first condition, and how tragic the second. For they are brothers for life whether they get along or not, and how sad to have an enemy for life, but they are not the only ones affected. Nothing grieves a father like strife between children. This is as true in the eternal realm as it is in the one you see. Are you aware of my pleasure when you love your brother and my grief when you do not? If you struggle to love him for his own sake, love him for mine. 

Not everyone has the same amount of money, but everyone has the same amount of time. In the long run this is more important and a great measure of human equality. Yet even as some people spend their money wisely and some spend it foolishly whether they have little or much, so you can spend your allotment of time wisely or foolishly. Do you think of unproductive effort as wasting time? Another perspective on the same issue is not to give your heart to things of no value. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also and there will you spend the time you have. If you guard your heart and only give it to things of true and enduring value, then you will spend your time wisely and well. 

My word contrasts milk and meat as sources of nourishment. Milk is for babies and children, and meat is for those who are grown. What is the spiritual meaning of this distinction? Milk is food eaten by others for you. New Christians get their instruction from others so that they may learn the established doctrines of the faith. This is entirely proper and necessary and fits the natural parallel of milk for children. But the essence of the Christian faith is a relationship with me and I want you to move on to the point that you can relate to and hear from me yourself in addition to what you hear from me through others. 

Do you ask me for a revival in your area, an outpouring of my Spirit? I am eager to do this. Are you ready for it? My disciples considered some fields and how long it would be until they were ready for harvest. I told them that the fields were ready for harvest now, and to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send workers for the harvest. That means you. You may not see any visible evidence that I am about to move, but do you see that I am preparing you by stretching your comfort zone and enlarging your understanding? For I am indeed about to move and I am preparing you to work in my harvest. 

I told a parable about new wine and old wine, and new and old wineskins. You understand that the wineskin is a church, and that a new wineskin that is flexible is required for the new wine I am preparing. The church must be able to adapt to accommodate what I am doing. You also know that the church is not a building but is comprised of people. So this truth can be scaled to any level, and applies to individuals as well as organizations. It is not just a new organizational structure that is required for my next move. The attitudes and mindsets of individual believers must be changed for them to respond to and be involved in my next move.