Dear Phyllis,
I had an interesting meeting with Gary
In 1962 I heard Joe Carroll bring a
tremendous message on Ps. 27-4 – “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that
will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my
life; to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His temple.” Joe
brought out that this was the secret of David. As multi-gifted as he was,
David said there was really only ONE THING that he was
after. And he was going to devote his life in pursuit of that. Jesus somewhat
underscored this truth when He said to Martha, “ONE THING is needful.
Mary has chosen that good part” (Lk. 10:42 ). That was one of
the greatest messages I ever heard, and I decided to make that my life verse.
For the next several years, if anyone ever asked me to sign their Bible, I
would always sign, “Bill Cook Ps. 27:4”. And it was my great joy to preach
several outstanding messages on Ps. 27:4. Until I came to the end of life's
road.
When Rosemary left me, and my life collapsed
in 1990, I went wild. For the next two years I was totally obsessed with a
desperate battle to save my marriage and family. I tried to pray the horns off
a brass billy goat. It seemed that God had changed sides. He gave Rosemary
everything she asked for, for the destruction of the family, and gave me
nothing for our salvation. When I hit the bottom, the Lord spoke to me a very
surprising word. He said, “You have been talking about Ps. 27:4 for 30
years, but you have never practiced it.” David said the one thing he
desired of the Lord was to dwell the house of the Lord to behold the beauty
of the Lord; and that was the last thing I was after. My one thing was the
salvation of my family. Finally I said, “All right, I quit. I will stop praying
for the salvation of my family, and devote myself to the one thing that David
was after.”
The next morning I got up early, got a cup of
coffee, and sat down before the Lord. I said, “Lord, I am not going to pray
about a thing, but just sit here for an hour and do nothing but bask in your
beauty.” I had been doing this for a month when I was talking to a sister at
church one Sunday, and challenged her to try it. I said, “Set 15 minutes aside
every morning; don't pray about a thing, but just sit there and behold the
beauty of the Lord. Then come back next week and tell me what you saw.” The
next week I said, “What did you see?" She said, “I did what you told me,
but I didn't see a thing.” I replied, “Neither did I.”
Man howdy, did that raise some serious
questions! For the next several weeks I was desperately engaged trying to find
the answers to four question.
1. Are you supposed to
see something?
2. What are you supposed
to see?
3. How do you see it?
4. If you don't see
anything – why?
I asked a dozen different people and got a
dozen different answers. No one knew if you were supposed to see something. And
if so, what?
The Lord started at the tail and began to
explain the answers to my questions. The answer to the fourth question was
fairly easy. If you don't see anything – why? Poor eye sight. The Lord
showed me how blind I was. But He also told me that He had some medicine that
would cure poor eye sight (Rev. 3:18). I told the Lord, “If You are serious
about selling some medicine, You can put me down as a serious customer. Tell me
the price of this medicine, and I will pay it.”
When I asked the Lord the price for His eye
medicine, He told me very clearly that the first price was TIME. It is
impossible to have 20-20 spiritual vision unless you are willing to spend a
great deal of time quietly waiting on the Lord. You don't get this by having
five minute devotions reading Daily Bread at the breakfast table.
AW Tozer was one of the greatest men of God in the 20th century. Tozer's books are classics, and his sermons were unique. He was a man of God who spent a tremendous amount of time in prayer, worshiping the Lord. One time my dear friend Joe Carroll was sharing a conference with Tozer at Fort Wayne Bible school. They wanted Tozer to preach twice a day and counsel. He said, “I can't do it. I don't have that kind of time.” So Joe did the counseling. Joe said the kids were lined up down the hall coming in for counseling scared silly. I asked Joe, “What in the world was Tozer preaching about?”
“God.”
“God?! What could he get out of that?”
Joe quoted a verse from Exodus when the Lord
came down on Sinai, and the entire mountain was a blaze of fire. And Moses went
up into that burning fire and lived. Oh my goodness! I never thought of that.
Tozer knew God like few men of his day. He shared with us what he saw. But he
got that from spending many hours each day before the Lord.
Another thing that the Lord told me was part
of the price for this eye medicine was to clean my mind out of too much junk.
You can't get spiritual vision with your mind full of all sorts of extraneous
thoughts. It is impossible to get all that stuff out of your mind, but you can cut
down on it.
Working from the back going forward, the Lord
began to show me how to behold the beauty of the Lord. The third point was How
to see. This one also surprised me. He showed me that there is a
fundamental difference between imagination and spiritual revelation. Previously
in my preaching, I told people,“If you want to see the beauty of the Lord, you
just imagine Jesus sitting on the Throne and all the angels worshiping before
Him.”Wrong! If you use imagination you shut the door on the Holy Spirit making
it impossible for Him to reveal anything to you. Imagination is totally
internal. It is soulish. It is my mind. Revelation is external. It comes from
the outside, by the Holy Spirit. Andrew Murray said the mind must function as
the servant – not the master. The mind must wait on the spirit. The Holy Spirit
reveals spiritual truth to us to our spirit (1 Cor. 2:10 -14). Then our spirit
transmits this to our mind. There is a difference between light and knowledge.
Knowledge can be stored. Light can only be seen. That is why sometimes we see
things that we can't put into words. When light is converted to words, then it
become knowledge
Passivity can be a little dangerous as the
devil can also come in on this frequency. This is one way of communicating with
the spirit world. We must be a little cautious, but it only as we wait on the
Lord allowing the Holy Spirit to take the things of Christ and reveal them unto
us that we will see anything. It is a huge mistake to think that we can get
spiritual revelation by studying a lot of books. Pulpits are full of pastors
who have heads as big as beach balls and hearts as small as peas. They have a
lot of knowledge but they have seen very little.
It has been said that the difference between
the prophet and the scribe is that the prophets enters beyond the vial into the
the Holy of Holies, and comes out to tell us what he has seen. The scribe
enters into his study, and comes out to tell us what he has read. The flavor is
slam different. One is the reality of Person of Christ, and the other is mans
thoughts about religion.
The next point of What are you supposed to
see? Also surprised me. That was a big question. What is the beauty of the
Lord? I used to think it was something external.
Todd Bentley is a highly spiritual man. He is
a man who sees a lot of angels. He says this is the way to raise money. He
claims to have had many celestial visitations. Paul said he knew a man14 years
previous who was caught up into heaven and saw things that were impossible to
describe (2 Cor. 12:2-4). Todd Bentley says he has had many such experiences.
(Bob Jones says he visits heaven everyday.) Bentley says he has talked with
Abraham and Paul. He has seen Jesus and the Father. He said Jesus was handsome.
He has a massive chest and 36 inch biceps. Really? This sounds much different
than what John saw when he saw the Lamb as it had been slain (Rev. 5:6). I used
to think this was the beauty of the Lord. I used to think we should imagine
this beautiful Being sitting on the Throne and marvel at the beauty of the
Lord.
Isa. 53:2 says of Jesus that there was“no
beauty that we should desire Him”.
What then is the beauty of the Lord?It is His
heart. It is His character. This is the beauty of the Lord. When I saw that, it
changed my whole attitude towards Ps. 27:4. I began to reread the gospels
looking at the character of Christ. As I began to see more of Jesus' heart, my
heart began to be filled with the beauty of the Lord. When I got to that I knew
the answer to the questions that plagued me why I didn't see anything.
Are you supposed to see anything?Man howdy – YES. But
what are you supposed to see? The beauty of Jesus is His heart. As I began to
spend serious time quietly waiting before the Lord allowing the Holy Spirit to
show these things to me, my life began to change. The stuff that was driving me
nuts began to fade away. Instead of being problem consumed, I began to be more
filled with Christ.
In 2 Cor. 3:18 we see that the
spiritual law of transformation is by beholding – “we all...beholding...are
changed.” It is true that anyone become what they are obsessed with. A person
who is after money has $ signs in his eyes. A person obsessed with sex has lewd
eyes. A person who spends a tremendous amount of time with the Lord, consumed
with the beauty of the Lord, will be Christ-like. Before the Lord got hold of
me, if anyone heard me speak for more than two minutes, they got an ear full of
my problems. But after Christ began to fill my vision, Jesus began to fill the
landscape.
I can't say that my life has been totally
devoted to pursuing this ONE THING, but from time
to time I have to remind myself that this is really the main point and spend
more time beholding His beauty. That was a major event when the Lord finally
was able to pin me hard enough that He could teach me one of the greatest
lessons of my life. The value of that made the agony of all that went before it
well worth while. I think we all could profit if we took David's advice and
followed his one thing more.
Have a good week, looking unto Jesus,
bill
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