"And we know that all things work together for good to
them that love God, to them who are the called according
to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did
predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that
he might be the firstborn among many brethren" Rom 8:28-29.
There are those who make heaven the goal of their Christian experience. However, if we have been
cleansed by His blood and made a member of His body, it is already established that this is where we
are going.
Another group are those who make as their objective the work of the ministry in which they are
involved. They focus all their praying and energy upon this as a goal. But this should never be our
objective. Rather, it is the means by which God is exercising us in order to spiritually develop us. We
must be careful to never become so involved in what we are doing that we lose our true perspective
concerning His will for us.
The Lord will never ask us how much work we have done for Him, rather, He will ask us what has that
work done to us. The result of all that we do will be registered upon our immortal spirit, in changing us
into the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not to remain what we were when first saved, a little
crying baby in Christ. But through the years we progress from being babes, to become little children,
children, sons, grown up sons, and then, fathers and mothers in Israel. There is a great variation in the
family of God - a progression, a growth.
Heaven is not our objective, it is our destiny. All that we do is not our objective, but merely the
mechanism that the Lord is using to change us as He has purposed.
Thus, the objective toward which we are to focus is as a point towards which our entire being begins to
move, in which everything is gathered together, until life moves toward this point, as an arrow that is
shot from a bow.
"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do,
do all to the glory of God" I Cor. 10:31.
"And whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the Name
of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God" Col 3:17.
"If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God,
if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability
which God has given, that God in all things may be
glorified through Jesus Christ to whom be praise and
dominion for ever and ever" I Peter 4:11.
The goal presented in these verses is neither the Kingdom of God or of heaven, but rather "the glory of
God." Our objective then, should be in alignment with what the Lord is doing, which will result in His
being glorified. It will take the totality of our being, along with all that we do, if we are to fully glorify
God.
This was the first vocation which God placed upon man when He first created him. The Lord made
man and placed him in a specially prepared environment, not to help him do something, but rather, to
glorify Him.
We come into this new creation which we have become, as co-workers with Him. We work with the
Lord, never for Him. The Lord does give us things to do, which we possess and come to have dominion
over, that He might have vessels, or instruments through which He might be glorified.
When some pray, they say, "Forgive us our sins." Our sins were forgiven when we came to the Lord,
and they are under the blood. We do not become a sinner by sinning. Rather, we sin because we were
born a sinner. Sin comes from a Greek word which means "to miss the mark." It is as though there was
a target to be aimed at and we were thrown out towards it, but missed the mark. Thus, "sin" is the
result of our missing the objective for which we were created.
"For all have sinned and come short of the glory
of God" Rom 3:23.
No one of us glorifies God to the fullness that we should in our every day lives. Thus sin is far more
than some wrong doing, it is coming short of what we should be doing; glorifying God. We may then
ask, "How may I glorify God?"
As a result of Adam's transgression, our lives became centered around our "ego," or our own well being
and pleasure, which is sin as it comes short of the intended mark, or goal. When we repent of this and
are cleansed through His blood and become willing to surrender the very root of our ego, the
"fundament" of our being, to the Lord, our orientation changes from our ego to Christ.
Now we can place the totality of our being in His hand and again become His possession, capable of
bringing glory to Him.
The Lord seldom comes to us in the way we think He will. Sometimes He is carefully disguised. There
are several records in the Word where Jesus was present, but they did not see or recognize Him, as
their vision was withheld.
After the Lord created Adam, He put the benediction of His approval upon him and said, "I am well
pleased." He was pleased with this arrangement with humanity. Adam was sinless, limited and
dependent as he had not yet functioned, that he might demonstrate the thing that God wanted, to be
glorified through His creation.
So Adam was pushed out into an arrangement in which a new law was introduced in the realm of
spiritual living. This law was the only way in which Adam could develop and glorify the Lord. This law
is called the way of testing and proving.
Our nature is a gift from God; we become partakers of the divine nature purely on the basis of a gift.
We receive salvation as a gift, but the Lord cannot give us a Christian character. This must be built by
continually subjecting our ego so the arrangements which the Lord has put in our path might have their
full effect and outworking.
This will release us and set us free; the real thing that God wants, until all the bondages of our self life
are gone. The power of the new creation life we are receiving will push them out and disentangle us
from the laws of our old self life.
We are new creatures in Christ Jesus. We are not that old creature that the Lord saved back there. All
that the Lord accepts of us and will take into eternity will be the amount of spiritual life and visionary
reception that we have received of Him.
If we will make this surrender to the Lord and give Him complete control of this creature that we are,
He will come within and work a miracle. The hindrance is not our sins, they have been forgiven;
rather, it is the resistance, conscious or unconscious, of our ego warring against the power of new
creation life that would push up into and through us.
Now, we can glorify Him as the Lord again lives His life through us.
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John Follette (1883 - 1966)
Follette was a gifted Bible teacher and author, who had both perspective and spiritual depth in his interpretation of the Word. He was an illuminated spirit in the field of spiritual reality, and had an unusual ability to impart “spirit and life” into those who sat under his ministry.He received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1913 while a student at a Bible School in Rochester, New York, and later became a teacher there until the school closed. He also taught for many years at Southern California Bible College. During the later years of his life, he was called into a wider field, ministering in conferences and retreats which took him around the world. He passed into his eternal reward in 1966 at the age of 82.