Living an Overcoming Life
The Lord desires that we would receive Him as our life and everything. Once we have received Him then He desires further that we would overcome. In Revelation 2 and 3 the Lord speaks to 7 local churches in 7 different conditions. These words of the Lord can be the Spirit's speaking to us if we have an ear to hear. The words of the Lord can strengthen and encourage us to go all the way with Him to be the overcomers that He desires. May the Lord give each of us a heart to respond to His call.
Contacting God
Receiving the Lord is wonderful. Not only do we have the joy of receiving God's forgiveness, we can touch the Lord Himself in spirit. We can taste His goodness. We can see His beauty. The Bible uses this kind of language to describe contacting God to show that it is a subjective experience. It is not an act of piety, a feeling of peace, nor even a mental appreciation of God. It is an experience of the Spirit of God enlightening and enlivening our spirit. We can contact God Himself in spirit! What a wonder!
Our Response
When we begin to know the Lord in this way we spontaneously love Him. He is so sweet and lovely. Who can resist? This love which comes from a fresh appreciation of the Lord is our first and best love
(Rev.2:4). It makes everything in our Christian life a joy. When our hearts burn with love for the Lord we gladly labor for Him. We endure hardships with joy. We reject things that would take us away from Him. We are kept in an overcoming condition by love.
The Loss of the First Love
(Rev.2:1-7)
There are many things that can cool down our love to the Lord. Our love to the Lord begins to decline when we say no to Him. After we receive the Lord He wants us to grow into His image. Many times the Lord urges us to do or not to do something. We can refer to these urgings as a still, small voice within or as a feeling in our spirit. When we hearken to this feeling our enjoyment of the Lord increases but when we resist it decreases. If we resist too often we will lose the freshness of our first love to the Lord.
Another thing that causes our love to decline is when we get caught up with outward things rather than the Lord Himself. We may get caught up with different things depending on the type of person we are. If we are emotional we may unconsciously love the feelings associated with touching the Lord more than the Lord Himself. We seek to repeat the experiences that produced the best feelings. If we are more of a mental person we may become enamored with the teachings of the Bible. If we like to do things we can get caught up with doing things for the Lord. This can easily occupy us to the extent that we forget to take care of our relationship with Him. We begin to love our work more than the Lord. In any case most of us Christians experience that our first love diminishes after a time.
Overcoming to Keep Our First Love
The problem is not that the Lord has forsaken us. He is still in our midst and holding us in His hand. Often the problem is also not anything outward. Outwardly the church in Ephesus was fine and we may be too but inwardly we are drifting away from the Lord. To overcome in this condition is to keep our love to the Lord burning and fresh. We need to repent of allowing other things to interfere with our relationship with Him.
The church in Smyrna was suffering persecution. This is not a strange thing to those who are faithful to the Lord. If we were of the world it would welcome us. Since we are not it hates us. If we are keeping our first love to the Lord fresh and burning then opposition will not defeat us. The enjoyment of the Lord will be our strength to stand firm. It is when we have lost our first love that persecutions begin to affect us. The danger is that they will cause us to compromise with the world. To overcome in times of trial we need to stand firm in the Lord without any compromise.
The Pressure to Compromise
In this country we don't face any life or death challenges to our faith. We don't have to chose between denying the Lord or death. Instead we face many tiny pressures to make small compromises with the world. Each thing in itself is no big deal but gradually they wear us down. The only way to overcome is by learning to know the Lord as the God of resurrection. He is in us as the resurrection life. His life can overcome no matter what failures or weaknesses we have. We need to learn to take the Lord instead of remaining in our weakness. He will live His overcoming life in us if we allow Him to.
If we do not overcome the pressures to compromise with the world we will end up in the situation of the church in Pergamos. This church dwelt where Satan's throne is, that is, in the world. A believer should be living a life that is a testimony against the things of the world but many of us end up in them.
In the world are the teachings of Balaam and the teachings of the Nicolaitans. Balaam was a prophet who was corrupted by the love of money
(2 Pet. 2:15). Nicolaitan means to climb above or subdue the laity. They were ones who were ambitious to gain a position above others. These 2 things, money and position, are what the world uses to entice us.
To overcome the world we need to overcome the desires for money and position. The Lord is our honor and wealth. No amount of the riches or status of this world will ever satisfy us. The love of the things of the world kills our spiritual life but when we love the Lord supremely then He fully satisfies us.
Loving the things of the world is not the furthest a real believer can fall. The church in Pergamos was dwelling where Satan's throne was but in Thyatira things of Satan were allowed to come into the church. Historically the church received pagan ideas, practices, and holidays. This lead to 1,000 years of darkness. Much of today's music, entertainment, philosophy, etc. is also inspired by Satan. Indulging in the Satanic things will bring us into darkness and lead us toward fornication and idol worship. No believer is so spiritual or strong that he can't be tempted by these kinds of things. They correspond and appeal to the fallen nature in our flesh. We need to flee away from everything related to them if we are to be the Lord's overcomers.
The church in Sardis represents a restoration and recovery from the worst of the evils of the church in Thyatira but the restoration was not complete. We may have been ensnared by the lust of our flesh, then repent of that and come back to the Lord. If our coming back is mostly in the realm of a change of attitude and actions then we will be in the condition of Sardis. We touch the Lord when we first come back to Him but soon that experience is just a memory and we are spiritually dead. This then becomes the pattern of our life. Once in a while we touch the Lord and are revived but it doesn't take long before we are dead again.
Defiled Garments
Verse 4 speaks of defiled garments. In the symbology of Revelation garments are a sign of our outward acts and behavior. So for instance, when it mentions washing our robes in the blood of the Lamb
(Rev. 7:14;
22:14), it means that we need our actions to be "washed" by asking the Lord to forgive us based on the merit of His redeeming death. Our actions are not up to God's standard. They are defiled by things such as our pride, self seeking, shortcomings, lusts, temper, etc. So we need the forgiveness that the Lord won for us in His redeeming death.
The garments of those in Sardis were defiled by deadness. When we try to repeat our past experiences of the Lord they are dead. The Lord wants us to seek Him afresh every time. The Lord is the One who gives life. When we touch Him we enjoy life. When we try to repeat that experience by doing the same things we become old and dead.
Still in the Wrong Realm
The reason we would remain in this kind of condition is that we are still not in the proper realm. We may have come out of the realm of living mostly in the flesh but now we are in the realm of the soul. Our experience centers around doctrinal concepts, feelings, and resolutions. We are trying to understand God, to be a good Christian, and to do what a Christian should do. It is no surprise that our experience of the Lord does not remain fresh and living because it depends on what we can do. This kind of living satisfies neither us nor God. We need to enter into still another realm, the realm of the spirit.
Three Realms
We all know that we have a body which is in and relates to the physical realm. We also know that our person is our soul which is composed of our mind, emotion, and will. It is in the psychological realm. But we may not know that we have a spirit which enables us to contact and even live in the spiritual realm. When we believe into the Lord our spirit is made alive by being born of God. (See article: Enjoying God as Life) Then we need to grow by seeing and entering into the divine realities in the spiritual realm.
So to be in a condition that is approved by the Lord like the church in Philadelphia we need to be absolute for the Lord and come all the way back to Him. In our experience this is the same as saying that we need to exercise to enter into our spirit and to remain there because when we are joined to the Lord we are one spirit with Him
(1 Cor. 6:17).
Living in spirit does not make us spiritual giants. We only have a little power. Actually the power is not ours but His. We give ourselves to the Lord without reservation so that we are willing to receive His every word. We also love Him treasuring His name above all others. Then we live for Him and serve Him the best we can according to the faith He has given us and the little power we have. In this condition the Lord is so real, present, living, and fresh to us.
The Degradation Due to Pride
(Rev. 3:14-22)
But even in this condition we need to overcome to remain here. The problem is that the blessings we enjoy can also be used by the enemy to distract us from the Lord Himself. We begin to look at what we have seen and experienced compared to others and feel pretty good about ourselves. The result is that we lose the reality of what we were enjoying. The burning desire towards the Lord, living faith, anointing, and fresh experiences of Him are only memories. But we bask in those memories and do not realize that the Lord is outside knocking to get in. To overcome this lukewarm condition we need to open our hearts anew to the Lord so that He would come in and dine with us.
Conclusion
Others have shown how the 7 churches in Revelation 2 and 3 correspond to the history of the church. Two books that I am familiar with are: Miller's Church History by Andrew Miller from Pickering & Inglis Ltd. and The Orthodoxy of the Church by Watchman Nee from Living Stream Ministry. I have attempted to show how they can also match our personal experience. In fact it is possible that we pass through all the conditions that they show. But whatever our condition there is a way for us to overcome. May we respond to the Lord's call.