Ministering Unto The Lord
The Privilege Of Our Priesthood - Part 5

by Rev. Wayne Monbleau

Being Before Doing and Living From The Center

When I first became born again, it happened because God made me His own blood-washed beloved child, just as He does for each of us. We are made new creations, new beings, before we can even do a thing about service. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things passed away; behold, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). Because Jesus Christ made me into a new person, I found that I suddenly had a whole new set of desires. It was identity first, God saved me and made me His child, out of which came my heartfelt desire to follow Jesus Christ, to live a Christian life pleasing to God. God was so wonderful to me that it seemed only natural to want to follow Him.

Certainly no one ever needed to teach me how to sin. I was born with a sin nature and, believe me, I sinned effortlessly. I sinned even without thinking about or knowing I was sinning. That's how natural sinning was for me, before Christ changed my life. Because I had a sinful nature, I sinned. And because Jesus Christ gave me a new nature, causing me to be born again, it became my response to want to follow Him. And because He has declared that we are "a royal priesthood" (1st Peter 2:9), it has become my response to minister unto Him. It is always out of who we are, or in many cases who WE THINK we are, that our doing results. This is why it is so crucially important that we learn to truly know and identify with WHO God says we are, so we may live a life consistent with Who God declares us to be.

The first question on my mind when I came to Christ was not "how do I act as a Christian?" The foremost issue for me was, "Is God real and is it true that I can be born again into a living relationship with the living God?" Being born again and filled with God's Spirit gave me my desire to want to follow God with my whole life. It was just as the Scripture said; I loved God "because He first loved us" (1st John 4:19). As I began to get in touch with Jesus within me, I just found myself wanting to live for Him in such a way that happened to coincide with God's word. What we do comes out of who we are.

Jesus Christ has Changed Us

We are a different person not because we decide to be different (for that is only our desire). We are different because Jesus Christ has changed us. He has made us different and because of that, we are different. God has made us His own, and in His light, in the light of our God-given identity, we may go forth with His direction, His calling and His presence to "do" what He has called us to do in this world.

I sinned because I was a sinner. I live the Christian life because I am a Christian. And I minister unto the Lord because I AM a minister unto the Lord. This is the Lord's doing and by being simply faithful to hear and heed His call, we may then be faithfully kept by His power to live consistent to His call, without any presumptuousness or assumptions on our own part.

Jesus once addressed a group of Pharisees who were completely preoccupied with exact service and outward appearances, with their "doing," as opposed to an inner revelation of God, recognizing as first importance their "being." Responding to their mistaken priorities, Jesus said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.

You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also" (Matthew 23: 25-26). It is obvious that Jesus was speaking of far more than a dish or a cup. He was speaking about us, about our hearts, about first recognizing our need for His inner work of conversion and cleansing on the inside, out of which may then come, with proper balance and understanding, our behavior: "so that the outside of it may become clean also."

Life Lived from the Center

Another way of saying and seeing this would be that, in God's sight and will, all true life is intended to be lived from the center. When we, as children of God, as His kingdom of priests, learn the value of living from the center ("first clean the inside"), then we will be living according to God's holy pattern. First God cleans us on the inside. This is His work. He makes us new and gives us our all-important new identity. As a result of God's inner cleansing and identity, we may then act out our salvation and be clean on the outside too.

This is the way it has always been intended to be with our Priesthood. We are human "beings" not human "doings." Doing comes out of being. In this unbelieving world in which we live, we are trained and conditioned to be action oriented; to "do." This is so often where we, mistakenly, find our sense of self worth and get the approval we often so desperately desire from others. However, by first realizing Who we are, "a kingdom of priests," out of this revelation of identity comes a true quality life of intimacy, ministering unto the Lord. This is living from the center and this is exactly what God did for the sons of Zadok when He called them to be priests unto Him.

Living from the center is God's time and again stated pattern for all to see in the Scriptures. Even back in the book of Exodus, when God first gave Moses the pattern for the temple, based upon a heavenly pattern, God purposely began from the center, just as He does in our lives. In the 25th chapter of Exodus, the Lord addressed Moses, saying, "Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them.

According to all that I am going to show you, as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so shall you construct it. They shall construct an ark of acacia wood" (Exodus 25:8-10). When God gave the vision of the temple, He began from the precise and exact center, with the Ark of the covenant which would dwell in the Holy of Holies, the true center of all activity in the tabernacle, the center where God's own presence would dwell.

When we are willing to see ourselves as God sees us and declares us to be, we will then be able to walk and breathe in this blessed awareness of living from the center. God has cleansed us on the inside first, causing us to be born again, and He has declared us to be a kingdom of priests, ministering unto Him. By being faithful first to our God given and ordained identity, as a result, we will blessedly learn to live our whole lives from the center, from the place where God's glory dwells. "O Lord, I love the habitation of Thy house and the place where your glory dwells" (Psalm 26:8).