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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
It is difficult to be open to the things of the Spirit, to walk in the Spirit and live in the Spirit when we live out our lives in the environment of institutional christianity. Why? Because the institutional church is a manifestation of ‘the letter.’ The worrisome part about ‘the letter’ and the mind-set that goes with it is that it makes it easy to be ‘workers’ and difficult to be ‘sons.’
We become like the air we breathe and the food we eat. Eat Jesus and be sustained and nurtured by Him and we become like Him: Free, holy and with authority and fruitfulness. But live our lives in institutionalism and our spiritual eye sight is dulled by the medium in which we live: A medium that exists to be a physical expression of what people believe they should believe, do what they should be doing as a community – a community of doing. Here we reverse what Jesus did. We become adept at constructing the righteousness sent from God – Jesus in terms of ‘law’ and performance.
This is easy to do. Living from rules is the default position of all who live in the knowledge of good and evil. Particularly is this so with those who have never moved from the law of Moses into Jesus and the ‘law of the spirit of life.’ It is also the condition of those who have moved from the law of Moses, yet are firmly embedded in the law of their senior pastor and ‘his vision.’
The ‘letter environment’ is the environment of the law. The law that is called the law of sin and death, referred to in Corinthians as the death dealing ministry engraved on stone. Living in this environment, we are dominated by the sinful nature. We cannot please God, much less ourselves as members of God’s community (Romans 8.5-8). Why” Because the Self Nature that thinks it has a righteousness of its own has not died and is still spewing out death.
Adam and Eve received the sentence of death when they ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. But all who live in Jesus by the Spirit, receive the gift of eternal life to be lived in the present by the Spirit of Sonship. This is not only the spirit of adoption but the spirit of resurrection, regeneration and life in you.
It is difficult to understand Romans chapter 8 if we live in the mind-set of letter and religion. Any mind-set revolving around method and formulae is a ‘letter mind-set.’ Wearing these glasses we will have difficulty in comprehending life in the Spirit even when it is thrust in front of our face. Why? Because it is foolishness to us. What is one to make of “life in the Spirit,” when we insist on defining the righteousness of God as things we do. No. The righteousness of God is more simple and more profound than these formulations of the knowledge of good and evil: The righteousness of God is Jesus. It is Jesus in you. The righteousness of God is what you are: A son of God.
Monday, June 28, 2010
The Kingdom of God is the government of God. But this government occurs as the Person of Jesus is manifest in His people and fills the whole earth. Instead of lawlessness, we have government that flows from the law of the Spirit of life.
‘But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth’ Dan 2.25 NIV.
Originally man was righteous because He lived in God. This is to say man was whole, being in unity with his inner life, with God and with the creation. Because man and the Father were one man and the creation was one. Man was fully himself and fully alive - as long as he remained in God.
But man embarked on a righteousness from himself; a righteousness not from God that was carnal, earthy, hellish. Here was a form or righteousness into which they were betrayed by Satan. This form of ‘righteousness’ was carnal and of the earth. It was man acting out of his flesh without the Spirit of God. But according to plan and in the fullness of time there came a ‘righteousness from God apart from law.’ This Righteousness had a name: Jesus, Son of God.
Here was righteousness as a Person sent to transform persons. This ‘God-righteousness’ was not a regenerated form of the knowledge of good and evil. It was LIFE from the One who is LIFE ITSELF imparted into those who believe by the Spirit. The Kingdom of God is a new creation. It is God’s order expressed through the Person of Jesus Christ in people. This order and life is none other than the Person of Jesus in His completeness expressed through those in whom He lives. Let’s be clear. It is Christ in us who is the righteousness of God. Not Christ in us directing us to the law of Moses and empowering us to keep it. There is nothing above and beyond Christ. Jesus is life in Himself – the exact expression of God and His regenerative power.
‘For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen’ Rom 11.36 NIV.
The words, ‘Government of God’ must not be seen as a means of consolidating people in old covenant living and the institutional life that is its expression. Much of the church as we know it a manifestation of ‘the letter.’ It should not surprise us that anyone imbued with institutionalism would see the kingdom of God as ‘the empowered letter.’ The sons of God live by the Spirit of God. The letter has its source in quite another place.
The government of God, like His church, is not built with human hands or by earthly methods with their hierarchies and controls. Before we say too much about the Government of God we need to be living in the understanding of what it means to be ‘the sons of God’ and why sons are authorized by God’s Son in a manner distinct from the scribes and teachers of the law. They are authorized by the Son and empowered by the Spirit.
There is leadership in the church Jesus build’s without human hands but there is not elitism of hierarchy. Any reliance on such things is leaning on the arm of flesh.
Sons live in the Spirit and not the letter, which means that the Kingdom of God is a kingdom of heart, spirit and life that multiplies exponentially and with order and creative power. It flows out as a river from those who live in God and not in laws. Not even in information. The law of the Spirit of life is the expression of Christ as new creation life through His people in the world. But it is not the law of Moses brought back from the grave or old Adam given new life.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
I’m reading through another book by Wayne Jacobsen entitled, ‘So You Don’t want to Go to Church Any More.’ What I find here is not new to me and not so different to what I have been writing most days for the last ten years. Nevertheless he expertly and gently exposes the various forms of captivity we have bound ourselves in as servants of ‘christianity.’ Christianity is not the same thing as a life lived in Jesus.
Religion is difficult to perceive as the cage it is because it takes us captive even as it appeals to our pride and sense of obligation. Many christians live in boxes within boxes and like it that way. The boxes provide certainty, security and the impression that we are pleasing God – by shutting out the world. Sadly many of us are only shutting out life, or worse still. Shutting out Jesus in the name of our beliefs and practices. What we are actually pleasing (and worshiping) is our personal and denominational knowledge of good and evil. Jesus did not come to perpetuate anything like this. He came to draw us into Himself so that we can live in Him for life and joy. A life in Jesus provides a freedom, an order and a peace that is totally unlike the kind of life lived in religion. Live in the knowledge of good and evil and we will never perceive it as what is it. We will end up worshiping ourselves. But should we live in God’s Son, ur perceptions of what is of God and what is not, will become acute.
People who live in religion will assert that they are free. The teachers of law asserted that they had never been in bondage to anyone. I have seen this ‘I’m so free’ argument used in favour of wearing the burqua, and many kinds of rituals and regulations. Of course they are right. They have proved themselves free to bind themselves – just like an Indian holy man is free to sit himself on a bed of nails. But in this ‘freedom’ we are bound by fear. We are afraid of liberty and captured by conformity. Sadly we are so bound that we are afraid to trust the Father to live in His Son or believe His Son when He says that He alone is our life.
We have the freedom to bind ourselves or kill ourselves, should we choose. Let’s be clear. With many of us, christianity is a religious form of self-harm. Thankfully it is the self - harmed, wading through molasses swamps of the ‘letter’ and church lore that Jesus lives to enlighten, set free and transform into potent sons and daughters of God. He does this by living in us. The best thing that can be said about ‘religion’ is that if people don’t curse God and die, they eventually tire of it and seek life where it can be found: In Jesus by the Spirit.
Jacobsen uncovers the conceit in the touting of ‘false freedoms.’ He writes, “You do these things because you believe they make you more acceptable to God and make Him more favourably disposed to you. If you didn’t do them, you’d feel guilty.” Put like this, such ‘service to God’ appears as what it really is: Service to self.
‘More favorably disposed to you..’ Far be it from me to suggest that this is ‘religion’ organised around manipulating God.’ And so it is that thousands of people who would not consider themselves legalists, live out of habits and usages, programs and attitudes, Bible studies, hymn-singing and praise and worship routines that have come to be associated with christianity and the church – things we must do. In too many cases, ‘Church’ and the system/culture that goes with it is a manifestation of the letter rather than the glory that results from a life rooted in Jesus. The letter that we hope will make God amenable to us, even obligated to us. We can live this way and imagine that we are protected from evil and that because of our ‘performance’ for God, God’s name is on the line when trials and injustice come. Not so my friend. The only name that is on the line in trial is yours.
Religious people are not bad. Just sad. Just choked with stuff that cannot heal and restore. Only Jesus can make whole people and only Jesus can make people holy and free.
Rather than running about wringing our hands, trying to ‘do christian stuff’ or scare ourselves into obedience by thinking about hell or the second coming we would all be better off to commit ourselves to Galatians 2.20 and live in the Way that has been set in place for us: Union with God through Jesus. That’s the Rock on which He builds Men and women and His church.
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” Gal 2.20 NIV
Saturday, June 26, 2010 ‘Who do you say you are?’ Recently a woman remarked despairingly, ‘My name is Leonora, but Leonora has never gotten to be Leonora!’ There has been an ad on the telly, with the line, ‘You are what you do.’ Unfortunately this is the way most people live. They live out of their ‘doings’ and because of this they never get to be themselves. Consequently they never become who they really are. Since they live out of their ‘doings’ they frequently side track others from their true identity and purpose. We need to live in Jesus rather than in the approval of others.
‘You do what you are.’ That’s the truth. If you live in God’s Son you will live your life as a son/daughter of God. You will have difficulties and challenges. But as painful as they are, you will prevail over them, not they over you. You will release life and the Life in you will utilize the pain and difficulty that you have been through to produce more life in you and for others. You will live in peace and joy and this joy and hope will infect others with the life of God. Why? You don’t live in doings. You don’t live in formulas and abstractions. You don’t live by stepping on or dodging squares on the draft board of the knowledge of good and evil. By living in God’s Son you live in you. You live as a son because you live in God’s Son. Intuitively you do what the Father means for you to do. Your heart and your name is Charles, son of God.
Jesus didn’t bustle about hectically trying to please His Father in the way many of His followers are frenetically absorbed in attempting to please Jesus. Jesus was. He was simply himself, living an uncontrived life in the reality of the Father’s Presence and love. Truly they were one. ‘One’ because Jesus was deep in His Father instead of deep in his own plans and activities. Yet because He was in His Father and His Father was in Him He was uniquely Himself, accomplishing all that He as an individual had been created to do. His plans and activities bore much fruit.
You can live in God towards God or you can attempt to live in yourself towards God – which means you can be a son or you can be a worker. To be a son you need to know who Jesus says you are. The Spirit will reveal Jesus to you and Jesus will reveal you to you. On the rock that is the Father of who you really are (a son), Jesus will build His church. Jesus asked some searching questions about identity.
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’) and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.” Matt 16.13-19 NLT.
Friday, June 25, 2010 Last night was report night at my wife’s school. Parents come to Elizabeth’s table to see how their child has been progressing as a student. Among other things Elizabeth, who is filled with the Holy Spirit prays over many of the parents and students. Some of them cry. Not because they are sad. They cry because they are sensing the love of the Father in the words she prays over them. Others feel the life of God as a prayer of encouragement is offered over the child. Many think it is a ‘lovely prayer.’ Actually it is the prophetic voice of God declaring who the young person really is in Him. The devil would kill many of us if he could, Since he can’s he settles for making millions less than they really are. But we don’t have to let him. Let me explain. I once heard a professional person described as ineffectual. Seated in Christ with His Spirit in you such a word will never be truthfully applied to you. You can be fruitful. I mean fruitful in the sense Jesus meant when He said, : ‘I have chosen you to bear much fruit – fruit that will last.’ Fruitfulness comes from being in Jesus, trusting Jesus and paradoxically resting in Him. By the Spirit. Those who are still and resting in Him are always more fruitful for His Kingdom than those who are busy for Him. Not only do the former produce much fruit. Their fruit lasts and has eternal effects because the ‘fruitfulness’ results from a life-flow from God. Live in God as a son. Be the man or woman He made you to be and your efforts will be authoritative and fruitful. Apart from Jesus we can do nothing. That’s His words not mine. Unconnected to Him and working in the flesh and for justification of our self-worth, our efforts will produce rivers of sand and come to nothing. But joined to Jesus and one with Him we release living water from God to irrigate people’s lives. Paradoxically, hidden in God, we become more truly ourselves and are more likely to find ourselves doing what we were created to do in the ways we enjoy doing it - with great fruitfulness for God. I don’t wish to boast but I do intend to tell the truth. Most of the things I do at this stage of life are fruitful. I cannot think of any thing I do for God that is not. Not only do I see fertility resulting from my work. I find Jesus connecting people to me and my and I see members of my family giving an uncontrived witness to the life and victory of Jesus – sometimes without us even being aware of it or trying hard. We just ‘be’ ourselves. Sure, we have issues at times, but you get my drift. I’ve always loved to write and teach. Since the advent of the web I have been able to do this from home. The Lord used my daily posts on the web to open a door to a ministry in India that bears much fruit. I planted a seed. Friends of mine tended and fertilized the ground. A good friend of mine had raised funds and filled a village with sewing machines enabling women to supplement their income. The Lord has brought increase. Last February we saw hundreds of people healed in Indian villages. Christ’s miraculous healings may be the first fruits. But who knows what the eternal harvest is for God’s Kingdom in India. All this because I relax in God and sit in my study tapping away at the keyboard, doing what I love to do. There’s nothing hard about that. Our next adventure is to see Christ’s healing power at work in Australian cities. The Christian performance addict will talk a lot about ‘getting out of the boat’ in an effort to measure up to Jesus’ requirements and because of what he sees as his obligation to Him to make himself ‘worthy’ of being saved. Such a person is driven to take risks for Jesus that are actually risks he feels he needs to take to prove himself worthy. Ministry is ostensibly for Jesus but actually about the self. What we need to see is the Jesus who lay at the back of the boat in such trust and acceptance in His Father than He could wake up and bring His circumstances into alignment with their personal safety and mission. Should we live in God by the Spirit we will begin to rule over circumstances, not they over us. This is the real meaning of walking on water. To live in Jesus by the Spirit is so live in God that we begin to reign over circumstances and utilize them for the glory of God. We walk on water because we live supernaturally in the Spirit. We live in the Spirit because we have not robbed the cross of its power. No not us. The cross is our power. We live in the assurance that we are loved and delighted in by the Father. So it was with Jesus and the man born blind. Blind, not because he was a sinner but because there was a purpose in his condition in God. The Son of God, who lived not in the knowledge of good and evil but in His Father, turned what looked like a calamity into a victory for heaven. Such things are not the province of the worry wart or performance addict. But they get to be normal for the sons of God who are living out of their life in Jesus rather than in their need to make a name for themselves in His cause. Wayne Jacobsen writes, ‘I’m not driven anymore. I haven’t tried to anything great for God in over a decade, yet I have seen Him use my life in ways that exceed my expectations… If you have never known the joy of living in God’s acceptance instead of trying to earn it your most exciting days in Christ are ahead of you!’
Thursday, June 24, 2010 As Winston Churchill is said to have remarked about an acquaintance, ‘There but for the grace of God goes God.’ The bad news and the good news. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Actually that’s the good news and the better news) For grace read not only His forgiveness but the impartation of Himself and His Kingdom.
Pride has many faces. All of us are more vain than we imagine ourselves to be. If it is not the love of the Father and the Presence of Jesus that dissolves pride, then the Lord will allow circumstances to have their way. Pride can be the motivating factor in ‘our work for the Lord.’ But none of us are of much use to Him until we allow Him do His work on us.
Pride is not only found in the outwardly arrogant. It can be found in unsuspecting, self-effacing, meek-looking men and women who believe in their hearts that they have the truth and every one else is wrong. Or that they have nothing more to learn.
Vanity can manifest itself as inertia. When the heart within says, ‘I’ve changed enough. I’m not willing to undergo continual evolution and constant re-adjustment of my beliefs and modes of being ‘me.’ No more ‘system updates’ for me. I’m not going any further up the mountain. Circuits around and round it doing good works will do and I’ll call that My Ministry. But the only ministries that expand the Kingdom of God are those in which the inner life experiences and increases in the intensity of His Presence.
In this season the Lord has opened before us infinite possibility. All heaven can be released on earth if we are willing to lay at His feet all of us and take on all of Him and all that is His.
This season is one of infinite possibility because it is a season of transformation – if we are willing to be transformed and re-invented by Jesus in our personal and community spheres. But if we are content in the passive, stubborn, bigotry of ‘what I’ve always believed’ and content only to add some Holy Spirit giftings to a dead tree, then we will never ascend the Mountain of the Lord or be ignited by His Presence. Not because we couldn’t, but because we were impeded by our own self-satisfaction.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
According to the Bible the world in which we live is not one dimensional. The reality in which we live is one of spirit and matter. The materialist would have us believe that matter is all there is and that what is real is that which can be measured and touched. There is nothing else. But the Bible teaches that the cosmos is both spiritual and physical with an interaction between the two. The ordinary person suspects that there is more to existence than the things we can see, which accounts for the fascination with things supernatural and the movies and TV shows of this genre. Not a few Christians are out and out materialists. However those who have been touched by God, who have experienced His Presence without and within and who have seen His power to heal and restore know that God is a Spirit, that He operates through the medium of spirit to alter things in a physical world.
It is difficult to be Godly if we do not understand spirit. We cannot worship God effectively if we do not worship in spirit and in truth and neither can we know God or ourselves. Not only is God a Spirit but we are embodied spirits. Life comes to us when our spirit is connected to the Spirit of God. ‘Being Spiritual’ is not doing things or believing things. To be spiritual is to be filled with fullness of God’s life so that we are empowered to live in the fullness of our humanity in the body. Sons of God live in the Spirit of God. From their place in Him they multiply His life in the world – more on this below.
Spirit as an entity is alive. It is a flow of life whose source is a person. Spirit can flow from God or it can flow from Satan, which means that spirit can be good or spirit can be evil. Jesus rebuked Peter with the words, ‘You don’t know what spirit you are of.’ ‘Spirit can be a synonym for an attitude, yet it is more than an attitude. The Spirit of God is life, light, love and liberty. It is a manifestation of Himself in you. Christ in you as your hope and your glory comes into you by the Spirit. This is to say that this is a supernatural impartation of the Person of God into our person.
It is important to understand the nature of ‘spirit’ because unless we do, we cannot understand the nature of Jesus, His Kingdom or our part in expanding it. Spirit is not just faith, belief or activity. It is a mode of being. Jesus said unless you are in alignment with the Spirit you cannot see God’s Kingdom or enter it (John 3.1-8). Failure to understand ‘spirit’ leaves us in religion. Misunderstanding on this issue leaves us in the dilemma of attempting to be Godly in ways that are not. These include the obsession with behaviors, attaching ourselves to an array of beliefs, engaging in analysis and debate out of our heads and engaging in Christian dialogue with a focus on information and the intellect.
We cannot become more human by attempting to be more human. But we can be more human by living in God by the Spirit of God. In this status the life of Jesus is transmitted into us by the Spirit and the nature of sons who are the Father’s heirs is imparted to our lives. The surprising thing is that many of God’s people who operate in spiritual gifts, do not live in the spirit. They either have a toe in the law or are living out of myriad things that they believe Christians ought to be doing - and all of them additions to Christ. The result of this is frequently a tumultuous and defeated life, inertia in their community and failure to advance up the mountain of God in spite of an emphasis on Jesus. There is a lack of authority over demonic power, or else a striking lack of discernment in which one lives in blissful non-awareness of the Spirit’s presence or absence.
If the sons of God are those who live in the Spirit of God and it is the sons of God who multiply the Kingdom of God with authority and not as the scribes, it is imperative that we understand the nature of spirit and live in the Spirit.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
A friend once remarked to me that if a person we both admired as a reformer had acted in a more sagacious way, people may have more readily accepted the reforms he advocated. Maybe. Yet if our mutual friend had not acted in the way he did, he would not have been himself. Some people are apt to be found writing up a history of a revolution, but they would never start one. They are not suited to such an enterprise by nature or by daring. Why can it be so difficult for followers of Jesus to say what we mean and mean what we say? We get a good hint from John Eldredge’s book, Waking the Dead. Here we find what some of us suspected already. We are so indoctrinated with the notion of ‘being nice to each other’ that we find it difficult to tell the truth. As a result life becomes a kind of a sleep walk in which we roam about in the world as if it is not there. So many of us have been misled into being nice rather than being ourselves. Jesus was ‘grace and truth.’ He loved people too much too much not to confront them with truth. He did not set out to be rude and neither was He. His purpose was not to make the religious look ridiculous. He simply was the truth, lived the truth and practiced setting people free. As a result His entire life was a confrontation with the Enemy and His works that led to His death – and complete victory. Which brings us to another cause of lack of candor: Fear. The motivation of fear can lead us to be rude to those who are near to us or whom we are able to bully. Fear can make us obsequious to those who we think have status and authority – authority perhaps to advance or retard our chances of promotion. If we love God, are secure in His love and filled with His life –we will love people. We will love them too much to leave them bound in misguided doctrine and twisted ideas about God and themselves. We will be looking for the right occasion to be part of their liberation. A life lived in the Spirit of Christ affords us wisdom, enlightenment and guidance in the matter of speaking the truth with love. The Spirit will open doors and tell us when doors are open for the reception of words that set people free. There is, however, a level of insight that transcends mere prudence: Discernment. This is a variety of revelation that comes to us from intimacy with the Lord. Sometimes it is a spiritual gift. But it is also enhanced by living in God rather than living in religion and the letter. A life grounded in the knowledge of good and evil will blind us to the reality of things as they are and things as Christ sees them. To walk in the light and see the light we must live in God through the new and living Way. ‘Discernment’ is quite different to political acumen and it is distinguished from the gift of prophecy. I have observed that most who have the gift of prophecy do not have the gift of discernment, although quite a number of them think they do. The gift of prophecy may reveal that there is a snake on the footpath. The gift of discernment will reveal the details of the terrain traversed by the path together with the features of the landscape and the practices in vogue that opened a door for the snake to be on the path. There are false ‘graces’ and false certainties that owe their strength to the knowledge of good and evil rather of a life in God. ‘The Spirit of Greece’ with its emphasis on rationalism and the intellect dulls spiritual eyesight. Joined to the liberal outlook, where elements of good and elements of evil are seen to be mixed and everywhere apparent, it leads to blurred vision and blurred speech as we attempt to synthesize elements of both in a foggy whole. Fundamentalism on the other hand provides false clarity, false certainty and false authority by casting grey as paler than it is and black as even darker than it was before. Pilate’s remark to Jesus ‘What is truth?’ as He stood before Him reveals that it is not only philosophy that finds it difficult to ascertain truth. Politicians do as well. In an essay on the ABC’ The Drum, Annabel Crab writes, ‘Clear language is of course risky. If you actually say something that means something, there is always an attendant risk that you might be wrong, that you might have overshot the mark or inexpertly assessed the mood of the electorate … They are anxious not to say anything too definite, lest they be accused of a back flip when later they enunciate an opinion that does not entirely match up.’ Such observations are relevant to those whose nature is to join people together, or to be a peace maker. Even if this is our gifting we have an obligation to give the trumpet a certain sound and not cry peace when there is none. It is also relevant to Christian leaders whose electorate is their church and who feel constrained to attempt to please its factions as well as steer a course between the various theological cows that may be grazing among the pews. The true leader of God’s people is never a politician because his service to God is the ground from which he serves people. But unless we live in God, we are unable to speak the words of God that are alive with power to transform. In God’s Son our words are Spirit and they are life. If one’s life is function of the letter, then rather than being possessed of a clear view of what God wants us to be saying on the occasion, we will be endeavoring to steer a path between the various parts of the Bible that we have never succeeded in making whole and cobble together the various bits of information that form our mind-set in the letter. Particularly will this be so if we live from a belief system instead of from a life lived in God by the Spirit of Christ. There’s a universe of difference between having beliefs that are a result of a life lived in Christ and having a christ [sic] who is the end product of our beliefs. One is life and one is death. Unless we live from God we will be limited in revelation and succeed only in sharing information. But by living in God through the Spirit of Christ we will excel in sharing life. Why did Jesus speak with such clarity and authority and not as the scribes? Jesus lived in His Father and not out of the knowledge of good and evil. His Kingdom was not of this world. He lived from heaven into earth. Whenever He spoke, He spoke the word and not the letter. He was not a political operative. He would rather sacrifice Himself than sacrifice the truth. He lived in the Spirit and not the letter. He spoke life rather than information because He lived in God instead of living in the knowledge of good and evil. Paul, to a lesser extent spoke the same way. Whereas Jesus was in His Father and lived in Him, Paul was advancing into Father God by advancing into the fullness of Christ. We can speak with authority and not as the scribes. But we must live in God through His Son and the Agency of the Holy Spirit. ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ John 8.32 NIV.
Announcing: Oikos Simple Church Seminar, Saturday, July 3, Briar Hill Community Hall - 9.30-5.00PM. Info here.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Back in the eighties there was a saying that was in vogue for awhile. People would say it when they wanted to agree with you in a chummy kind of way.. ‘Yep. You’re not wrong,’ they would say with a laugh, and all would feel agreeable. Being right and not wrong is a satisfactory way to be. Who wants to be in Frankston when they intended to be in Geelong?
We can live out of behaviors that are right and not wrong. People search for philosophies and religions as an aid to do it. We can construct a view of life out of things that we believe to be right and not wrong - understandings, view points and values. We can live in what we call ‘the truth’ and live out of our ‘belief system.’ But those who have life - real life - live their lives out of the Son of God. God is a Spirit and those who worship and know Him must worship in spirit and in truth. But this can never come from beliefs or a belief system. It comes to those who live, move and have their being in God’s son. It comes from the union of man with God by the Spirit.
Jesus lived out of His Father. We are meant to live out of Jesus. Not out of legalism, the letter or performance. Legalism has a connotation of obsessive religious behaviors. The ‘letter’ has the connotation of intellect, philosophy and position. It is information based but not spiritual, although usually taken to be. Performance orientation is a deep need to do well; to perform to please people like mothers, oneself, others and God. The common factor in all of these is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the vision Jesus gave to Rick Joyner those who eat of its stinking fruit walk in blindness, darkness and paralysis. Well let’s be clear. We can live in this or we can live in God. But we can’t live in both. This is why the Father provided a new and living Way – His Son Jesus.
‘Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me’ John 6.57 NIV.
‘Feeding on Jesus’ means drawing our life from God. ‘Feeding on Jesus’ means our life is sustained by His Spirit flowing into us to become us. To live in Jesus is to have the life of Jesus in you. This is the real meaning of spirituality – to live one’s life in God and from God by the Spirit. Which brings me to the warning I need to give. There are thousands of God’s people who practice spiritual gifts. But sadly they don’t live in the Spirit. They live in themselves, in their knowledge and their works. They enjoy some satisfaction in what they accomplish. But these accomplishments are small in comparison to their potential as sons living unconditionally from God’s Son.
Leaders have been known to introduce the baptism of the Spirit and His gifts to the church. But sadly they remain stuck in the mind-set and world view of ‘the letter.’ The ‘letter’ they minister does not exactly kill. It just fails to give life. But those who live in Jesus have an ‘authority’ that is quite unlike the scribes and exponents of the law. It transcends knowledge because it is life and power. It is spirit.
June 20, 2010
Myriads of Christians make themselves impotent as sons because they define goodness as a list, when the truth is that goodness is a Person. About two years ago I asked the Lord why so many of His people attempt to live in law rather than in Jesus. God, why do so many of your people hijack Jesus to fulfill their compulsion to live in law? Why don't they just live in You and be done with it?
The Lord answered me in a dream and said, ‘Teach them Galatians 2.20.’ Galatians 2.20 is not only about living in Jesus instead of living in laws. It is living in Jesus instead of living in you. It is Jesus in you. Ron McGatlin explains this in His essay,
Friday, June 19, 2010
What is it that counts in the Kingdom of God? It’s not numbers of people, the extensiveness of the work, it’s not participation and it’s not community. It’s not even people getting supernaturally healed, as exciting as this is. It’s knowing God and living and acting from His Presence.
A deluded man is a man who is engaged in ‘the Lord’s work’ on behalf of himself. Nothing is as pitiful as a spiritual fool attempting to lead the wise.
God has made Himself present with us through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. By living in the Spirit we are the family of God, loved and empowered as sons by the Father. God’s Presence is the difference between something that is dead and something that is alive. It’s knowing God, being known by God and being alive in God. Significantly Jesus told a parable in which He disowns people who claimed to ‘know’ Him. These were people who had used supernatural power to heal people in Jesus’ Name. The significant thing was, however that they had done these things using His Name while acting in their own name. One might imagine that such people had authority. But they didn’t. Not in the strictest sense. They were not authorized because Jesus did not know them. Rather, he stated that they were workers of iniquity.
This combination of the miraculous with lack of authorization raises significant questions. While such people may give a word of knowledge or heal a back or two how successful could they be in felling strongholds, binding the strongman and being instrumental in eliminating the power of principalities and powers? We don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know the answer. We are entering the season of the final showdown between Christ and Satan. We must enter into the fullness of genuine authority.
‘In Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority’ Col 2.9.10 NASB.
We are either filled with Christ’s Presence or not present ourselves. I mean we are not who we really are. Not our authorised by God selves. We are less than we could have been because we have settled for less that the Person of Jesus as our reason for being and doing. Our sonship and the authority that goes with it is diminished because we have settled for something less than the fullness of Jesus and the intensity of His Presence. Concentrate on His hands and we will not enjoy the life and light that flows from His Face.
Think of the ark of the Presence and what it could do to those who came under its influence. Then think of what that golden box would be like if it was empty of the Presence of God. It would be just a box. We can be a busy box, a missionary box and an ‘initiating conferences’ box or a‘lets do community box,’ but only when we are the dwelling place of the fullness of the God-head bodily do we multiply the Kingdom of God’s sons.
Thursday, June 18, 2010
It can come as a shock to learn that we are not advancing the Kingdom of Jesus just because we are sincere or working hard. We spread the Kingdom of God to the extent that Jesus’ Person and life is within us – by the Spirit.
Jesus said that to ignore His teaching is to build on sand. Like sand castles built by children on the beach work that is ours and not the result of Him in us is seen and then disappears just like a sand castle dissolved by the waves of the rising tide. God is in us when we are one with Jesus in the way that Jesus was one with His Father. This not difficult. Jesus promised this in John 17. He now reigns beside the Father in heaven to release Himself through us on earth. How? Through His Spirit in us.
People sometimes tell me how outward looking and active certain churches are. My question is, ‘How many of the people in this active church are baptized with the Holy Spirit and actually live in the Spirit? These people may be kindly enough. But how many of them can exceed what any good-minded atheist is able to do? Jesus instructed: “Don’t leave your Jerusalem’s until you are baptized with power from the courts of Heaven.’ That is, ‘Don’t leave home without my baptism.’ One of Jesus’ names is ‘He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ Let me put this clearly. For the disciple of Jesus, baptism in the Holy Spirit is not an option. It is a command.
If we live in God through God’s Son, Jesus we will be lead by the Spirit of God and multiply the life of God in everything we do. Rather than waiting for the Second Coming we are here to multiply what Jesus began. Recently in India with a team we saw hundreds of people healed of diseases in Jesus’ name. The key is to live in Jesus by the Spirit instead of living in religion. The Jesus who healed the sick and multiplied His power through John, Peter and Paul is the same Jesus who lives in you. Sometimes Jesus will instruct us through dreams, visions and words of knowledge. At times we simply proceed confidently in Him because God has made us one with Himself. As Paul put it, “To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” Col 1.29 NIV.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Legalism can be alive and well in circles that claim to be filled with and led by the Holy Spirit. Recently I was in a room full of people who operated in the gifts of the Spirit. Yet they lived their lives out of all the things they believed church people should be doing. Some resented any attempt to dislodge them from being human doings to the rest and fruitfulness in Jesus found in ‘being a son.’ Many christians live in the things of God and substitutes for God and hope to gain His Presence. The sons of God live in God’s Son and multiply His Presence wherever they go.
It’s amazing how few christian leaders actually look to Jesus as their life-source. Jesus is certainly making progress in having Himself worshiped as The Way, but there is still a way to go. Many who are looking for more are still captured by notions of church and how we can improve church and make church what we think church is meant to be. Jesus did not have the obsession with ‘church’ that many would be leaders still have. He was hooked on His Father and had a holy obsession with drawing people to Himself. ‘Where two or three gather, I am with them.’
It is adoration of Jesus that enables Jesus to build His church. This is the acknowledgement that He is the Christ, Lord, Source of life and power over the Enemy and His works. When Jesus died all temples made with human hands died with Him. When He rose He established Himself as the One who lives in people by the Spirit: The shekinah in us. The Presence in us. The Presene that has a name: Jesus Christ Son of God.
The addiction to us ‘building the church’ has many forms and subtleties. Should it be pointed out that it is supposed to be about Jesus, the reply can be, ’But that’s a given.’ The truth is, however that He has been given away.
Sometimes I’m surprised to find that senior men of God who have served the church with faithfulness under the impression that they are serving God, are still looking for some method or formula to escape the increasing pain of their ineffectual labours. Jesus said, ‘Hey, it’s Me. Apart from Me you can do nothing. However joined to Me, one with Me, you will produce heaps of fruit.’ We have a slogan in our Gathering. The Lord gave it to us a few years ago. It’s ‘The sovereignty of Jesus in the power of the Spirit. Don’t expect to see His kingdom grow if it is not about Jesus and sourced in Jesus. Don’t expect to see the Kingdom appear if it’s about Jesus but divorced from the baptism, infilling and power of the Holy Spirit.
The Presence of the Father and the Son, ministered by the Holy Spirit is the core of His church. Notions of ‘community’ and phrases like ‘purpose driven’ are signs of a human centered church. I said to a woman once, ‘Look for a fellowship where the Presence of Jesus is central – where Jesus is all and in all.’ Her friend, a Pentecostal lady and representative of the kind of legalism that accompanies such persons attempted to correct me and said, ‘You need more than the Presence.’ Not so dear lady. Anything more than the Presence of God is an addition by man that both dulls and negates the life-giving power that comes from the person of Jesus.
Not a few versions of ‘christianity’ are based on the notion that if I perform for God, He will perform for me. If that were so we would be God and He would not be. Such attitudes are common to those of us who are still living from the law of Moses or who are simply living out of performance. But we alive because God’s mysterious plan lives in us.
Last Friday to Sunday, I was at my second Christian Conference for the week. I’m not a conference junky. I get my life from my fellowship with the Lord. More on fellowship below.
It is 6.52 PM and I am home after a pleasant long-weekend Monday consisting of a late exit from my bed, then a pleasant hot breakfast of mushrooms on toast at a road side café. Next some time spent with a precious member of my family where I and a friend prayed the healing of Jesus into and over her life. We don’t know what the results will be yet. She was not instantly healed. Sometimes God’s healing is instantaneous, other times progressive. What we do know is that as sons of God, with authority (not as the scribes) we do not turn up with His Presence in us, and flowing out from us and nothing happens. Rivers of Holy Spirit life do flow out of those who believe God.
The first conference attended was at the Nunyara Conference Centre in Adelaide. See Thursday and Friday’s post. The second Gathering was at Kincumber on the NSW Central Coast. The interesting thing about these conferences was that they both had the aim of being in Jesus’ Presence, of having more of Him, hearing Him and entering into the life with Him that He has already provided. The title of the Second Conference was ‘The Vine and The Branches – Abiding and fruitfulness.’ Most of the people at the first conference, I had not met before.
The people at the second conference, the mid-year Gathering of Spirit-filled Christian Groups are folks I have been walking with for the past ten years. Many of us came into what we call ‘The Renewal’ together. Other people where present for the first time. One of the motivating factors with some people is disaster in the field of personal relationship. With others the push factor is a simple desire to have more of God than is currently on offer in their churches.
Both conferences were understated. There was no hype and none of the rants that can be popular at some venues or the emphasis on celebrity and elitism that can go with it. While the atmosphere was understated the atmosphere was fresh with the aroma of Jesus. A young Anglican minister observed that it was clear that Jesus was present. At both conferences the culture of listening to God and hearing from God was normal. None of the speakers at the second conference came from the clergy. This was not because clergy are not welcome. It is because people are increasingly aware that Jesus ministers through His friends – those who are joined to Him, with the result that they speak out His words of life.
Some reading this will be aware that it has been prophesied that ‘Nameless, faceless people’ who are the friends of God with a passion for Jesus, are soon to take their places in the leadership of the church. This is a non-hierarchical leadership the church being built by Jesus without human hands. In the words of Jesus as reported in a vision by Rick Joyner, there are leaders who are being appointed by Jesus as distinct to leaders who have appointed themselves.
‘A nation of kings and priests’ will take their places and are beginning to take their places as minister of Jesus. This was clearly apparent at the Kincumber Conference. Under the theme, “I am the Vine, you are the branches” various people spoke and then with the authority of Jesus ministered to each other in the power of the Holy Spirit. One young man anointed people on the forehead with the joy of the Lord. As you might imagine most were eager to receive the Spirit of joy into their lives and if they believed, they did! The significant thing was that ordinary people took the initiative to minister life in the name of the Lord in the power of the Spirit.
Now to fellowship. This is the season in which Jesus is revealing to His people that they are not slaves and workers, but daughters and sons. Increasingly He is revealing His love, forgiveness and delight personally to His children. In this respect, the most amazing ministry occurred at the hand of a woman who had successfully recovered from an operation that removed a benign brain tumor. But this rehabilitation is not the main story. The main story is her spiritual re-creation at the hand of Jesus – personally. In her testimony she detailed how she had been PERSONALLY MENTORED by the Lord Himself. Interestingly, what Jesus taught her was the key things that He is engaged in teaching the entire Body in this season.
She now has an extraordinary prophetic ability to reveal the Father’s love to His daughters and sons. Many of the attendees, including myself were encouraged and inspired as she revealed the Father’s delight, love and personal direction for our lives. She delivered the most detailed and extensive prophetic words that I have ever heard.
This was a very gentle and life-giving conference with the freshness of Jesus, His living water and His wine available for all who wished to drink
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
I wonder how many know that life as a ‘christian’ is not identical to a life in God. I wonder how many know that spiritual gifts are not the foundation of our life in God – but that life in the Spirit is the foundation and the building? Are you aware that you can be proficient in spiritual gifts but be without the Spirit because you are living from another place?
‘The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned’ 1 Cor 2.14 NIV.
Life in the Spirit not only life in God. It is God’s Person, God’s life in you. Here we are – thousands of years since Eve plunged us into the torturous insights of the knowledge of good and evil and millions are living in this knowledge as though the cross and the outpouring of the Spirit had never happened. Could it be that christians are mugs or is it that Satan is deceptively clever? Whatever the case, the normal christian life for millions of christians is to be living robbed and living in the un-life of the knowledge of good and evil. Well, are you going to continue this way or do something about it?!
Non-believers live from the fruits of the knowledge tree as a matter of course. Many christians eat of the fruit of this tree because, over 2000 years later, they have not embraced the fruit of The Branch and are attempting to shake fruit that is not there off that leafy fig-tree that Jesus condemned before He went to turn His cross into the tree of life. Millions of christians have not grasped their inheritance and Satan is laughing at the way he has castrated them.
It is not obvious that Jesus brought the reign of the tree of knowledge to an end at the cross, just as it is not obvious to the millions of christians who are still eating its fruit today. It is not obvious because God’s treasures in Christ – our inheritance as sons who live in the Spirit by the Spirit – is hidden in a field. It is, of course, hidden so that it can be found, but it is hidden under the debris of religiosity, churchianity and bibliolatry to such an extent that we really do have to sell all that we have and all that we are to possess it. Even though it is already ours. The phrase ‘sell all you have’ is particularly pertinent to the members of some denominations because ‘all they have’ is an identity driven theology that feeds human pride, panders to their fear, distorts the new testament and gives them the false hope that all this appeases God and gives them a ticket to heaven. Never mind that Paul said, ‘If rightness could be gained by law, Christ died for nothing.’
There is no spiritual life in man, no spiritual life in knowledge, no spiritual life in things, no spiritual life in ethical behaviors, no spiritual life in the law and no spiritual life in religion. Life comes from and is found in God’s Son. The only genuine life is Spirit life flowing from God into you.
To live in anything other than God is to live death. Only God in Christ possesses life in Himself. Only Jesus imparts life to your self. When Jesus imparts His life and light He is not filling us with law in some miraculous yet perverse way. He is filling us with Himself – the righteousness and wholeness of God; the Person of God imparted to your person. If Jesus exists to impart the law, then there is something greater than He, something additional and something extrinsic to Himself. If? But there is nothing greater than the Son of God for whom all things were made and for whom all things exist. Christ is above all things, and in Him so are you. In Christ all things are under your feet. So will you lived robbed or live gifted?
Jesus joins us to God and makes us one with God. Just as Jesus became sin for us, so He is the righteousness of God in us. He is the Means whereby the sons of God live in the Father. He is the means whereby sons have authority and not as the proponents of the knowledge of good and evil. Jesus is the means whereby the Spirit-life of God is transferred to our hearts, hands and feet and multiplied in the world as the Kingdom of God’s Sons.
Monday, June 14, 2010
‘This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son’ 1 John 5.11 NIV. ‘In him was life, and that life was the light of men’ John 1.4 NIV. ‘Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’ 17.3 NIV.
There is a sense in which we have eternal life today. Life, if it is eternal is now as well as future. This life is not just ‘heavenly life.’ It is the life of heaven in us today! This ‘today life’ comes to us from Jesus by the Holy Spirit. This unlimited, unrestricted life comes to us from the Sun of Righteousness with healing and restoration. He heals hearts and creates community. More on community below.
This warmth and light comes from knowing God through knowing Jesus who is the exact revelation of the Father. We are made alive in Christ and we know God through Christ and the revelation of the Holy Spirit. The message in John 17.3 is this: ‘Know who God is and we will know who we are.’
‘The light of God is the light of men.’ The worship of Jesus, the positioning of His Presence above ourselves and above all shines the light of God into God’s people. It is through worship that we know God. Through the primacy of Jesus that we worship God. Through intimacy with Jesus we know God. Through His Presence ministered by the Holy Spirit we know God and receive the riches of His life – the warmth of His Presence in and among us.
To advance into the revelatory light of His Presence is to know God and to know ‘I AM.’ But here’s the bonus. Know God and I will know who I am, and more. My brothers will know me and I will be known as I am by my community. There can be no community without worship and no God-community where we do not sit at Jesus’ feet to seek His Face. In searching Jesus’ face I will know my own. When Jesus is known as He is, which is Lord of all, we will know each other as we are. This is the house of living stones.
Friday, June 11, 2010
The second day of the Listening Conference might have been called. ‘Abandoning the self-life and living in God.’ This should not be mistaken for abandoning selfishness. It is abandoning the ‘self-life.’ All of it and having our ‘being’ formed in Jesus and from Jesus.
The focus began with the older and larger men being encouraged to sit in the Father’s lap. Some were larger than others. We noted that as an adult with our ‘stuff,’ agendas and sense of propriety it is sometimes difficult to climb up and place ourselves where we belong, but then not so difficult if we remember that He has placed us there already. There was quite a bit about sitting in Jesus’ lap today and getting over thinking we are ‘too big’ to do it. But the Lord was saying that we don’t realize how big His Lap is!
Then we were called to bring to mind that which makes us most alive and satisfied in ourselves, then to lay this down and give this to Jesus and so to live in Him and from Him. This did not mean we are not allowed to do things that bring us satisfaction any more. It meant situating ourselves in God as our Source of being and doing so that our lives, projects actions release His life.
We were then led to think of the sustenance a tiny body gets from its mother. Father (Mother) God will not only nurture us. His Presence/Life in us will consume the flesh in the flames of His Presence; flames that release the seed that grows into the trees of His Kingdom. The metaphors and images are mixed, paradoxical but applicable to the life enfolded in Christ in the Father.
The things we desire to repent of are the fruit of the self-life. To be in God is to be selfless and at the time who you were made to be. Dead to self and alive to God we are the new creation man/woman. The thing that many of us consider is the Vine is frequently not Jesus at all. It is us and our self-life being the branches but acting as though we are the Vine. Having made ‘gods’ out of our vines we are sucked dry and made impotent by them. When we turn to the Vine we live from Him and grow out of Him. Our being is joined to Him and as such we are daughters and sons.
The notable thing about Jesus is that He did not hold on to His own ‘being.’ He gave Himself totally to the Father, just as He asks us to give Himself totally to Him.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
There are twenty people at the ‘Listening Conference’ from a variety of walks. Most of them from the non-institutional sector of the Body. We are not allowed to talk about ‘ministry’ here. There are no speakers or program, unless the program is thought of as, ‘Will you all stop your obsession with doing your stuff and just be with Me – because until you do you can never be who you are in Me. But if you do you will receive your true self back to fulfill your purpose as My daughters and sons’ Yesterday we spent time in asking God what He wanted us to lay down. People repented of all kinds of things = mainly to do with pride, self-centeredness, ego, obsessions with doing and a failure to be still and know Him and as a result to know ourselves as we are.
The Lord gave one person a picture of himself in a picture frame – a frame that became filled with bars as in a jail. The Lord said, “With most of you your ideas of yourselves and what you know are your prison. Be willing to give up to Me the ways you see yourself.”
The Lord wants us to turn absolutely everything over to Him. Even our relationship with Jesus. Are we ready to give up our relationship with Jesus? For many this ‘relationship’ is ‘a thing we do.’ It is ‘our thing.’ A bunch of things we do that we call our relationship with Jesus. He wants this handed over to Him so that there is nothing that remains between us and God and we live in this Oneness that He has made.
“My people. Will you stop doing all that stuff you do and just BE WITH ME!”
Our life is often, ‘In ourselves we live and move and have our doings.’ But the Lord is drawing us into, ’In Him we live and move and have out being.’ He wants to draw us so radically into His Son that everything we do is empowered with His life.
A friend of mine had a dream – people going into Jesus, sitting on His knee, remaining in Him and coming out empowered as who they are. That is, who they really are rather than who themselves and others had imagined themselves to be. This was the purpose of our time at the ‘listening conference’.
The facilitator, an understated guy from the states and not your normal showy brother from that country, said that in some other country at another time, they did this with a group of people and the Lord gave each of them a book in the Spirit which they could actually see and read. It was the book of their life which each turned and read with shaking, trembling, tears and joy. These were the books of the new man and woman in Christ. These people were never the same again. The new creation, man victorious over the Enemy and His lies. Victorious over circumstances and a multiplier of God’s life and joy from their identity as the Sons of the Father.
TUESDAY, June 10, 2010
Jesus is drawing His people into living out of Him rather than out of ‘Christ-Things.’ We can live out of ‘Christ-Things’ in a number of ways. One is to attempt to live our present life out of our end-times imagination. With some Christians “Israel” and the end-times are the same thing. To live out of Jesus is to live spiritually because this is life in the Spirit. Life in anything less than ‘ the Spirit ‘ is a rip-off leading to the deformity of who we are as persons and as the church.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal 3.28 NIV.
As we live out of Jesus we will be built up and wised up. We will live increasingly out of the Fatherhood of God and in the revelations that are associated with being sons of God. A life in Jesus is more than enough, as He is the alpha and omega and all that is in between. When the disciples asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come to Israel His reply was that ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ Acts 1.8 NIV.
The Bible talks about the end times – most of it in images and metaphors. The meaning that we attach to these can be informed by the shadows of the old testament, but the definitive reality will always be found in Jesus. End time events will be an expression of Him rather than by assumptions that are made by attempting to extrapolate old testament entities into the new covenant age.
People are not saved as ‘states’ or nations. They saved are those who move into a relationship with Jesus. Israel will be saved to the extent that individuals respond to Jesus. People are not saved in bulk. The importance of Israel is a certainty for many Christians. Whether the state of Israel becomes famous as its people and government turn to the Lord to become re-grafted in, as Paul says, or notorious for claiming the promises of God without being a worshiper of the Messiah, remains to be seen. But the nation that claims God’s privileges and promises will certainly be called to account by He who sits on David’s throne.
The dangers of living out of ‘Christ-things’ such as our versions of end-time events are great. Jesus is not a creature of the letter but of the Spirit. The end-times will bow to Him and be formed by Him, not He by them. Christ is not hostage to theological pressure groups. He is not political even if His followers are. There is a political spirit, but it is not His Spirit. His Kingship will transform the world but He is not off this world. If it was, Jesus said, ‘My servants would fight.’ So why all the fighting? The fact that Israel was established by force and is maintained by force [read the flesh] should cause us to question if the state was established by man or by God. There is informed material on the net on this and in an excellent book entitled, ‘Whose Promised Land,’ by Colin Chapman. You will find it different in tone to the offerings of some that are neither scholarly or informed.
Rest assured that the Second Coming is under Christ’s feet. It is about Him and not about Israel or the United States. Neither will it be about any of the pet doctrines of denominations, sects and their competing brands. Many lived out of their ‘assumptions’ at His first coming. Most of these assumption were ‘supported’ by their interpretation of scripture. Yet they missed the ‘living Word.’ Their most zealous ideologues declared that this man must die to preserve their place and their nation. Interesting words, ‘Place’ and ‘nation.’ Is anything ringing a bell here?
There are dangers associated with ‘place, nation’ and ‘end times positions’ that are just as real today as they were after Jesus raised Lazarus. Could it be that the claims ot Jesus to be savior and Lord to the Arab world are being put to death by Christians whose constructions of end-time events lead them to give biased and over zealous support to the state of Israel? Does it occur to people that the weakness of christianity and the rising power of Islam has something to do with worship by christians of gods that are not God, namely their pet theologies and empires.
Jesus won’t be missed the second time. Every eye will see Him and He will be bringing a reward with Him. But what kind of reward? It’s a fearful thing to have claimed the moral high ground and to have treated people with the contempt that Israel has for Palestinians or in the ways the United States treated Muslims at Abu Grabe. How different is this from the behavior that people in the West label as the enemies of the western world?
A young Turkish woman, educated and personable, speaking on television about the recent events on board the Mavi Marmara in international waters, described how she asked a female Israeli soldier, ‘Why are you treating us like animals?’ The soldier replied, ‘Because you are.’ Could it be that such arrogance is the result of being brought up as the ‘chosen people’ and that when you act, you are acting in the name of God? How different are such attitudes to those of Islamists who see the rest of the world as infidels because they are in their own view the chosen of Allah? What degree of difference and similarity is there between a Zionist and an Islamist?
Chosen is an interesting word. The core of the gospel is that people of all nations and tongues are indeed chosen of God for eternal life. Either Christ is all and in all or kingdoms of this world are legitimate. Either the cross removes all walls and division or it is just a talking point for home groups. But ‘chosen’ is not a license to stamp on people. Demons are meant to be stamped on, but not people. People are there to be redeemed, which is difficult if one is not joined to the Redeemer. But then I guess that if the state of Israel is important to your kingdom and your scenarios of end-time events, then Palestinians and others are disposable. Too bad about that. God help us if the so called kingdom of god is ushered in by people who hold such beliefs. Who else is ‘disposable?’
All the prophets from Isaiah to Jesus warned that is not sufficient to be the children of Abraham to enter the Kingdom of God. There’s no free ticket based on belonging to a clan or nation. One must believe God as Abraham believed God. God comes close to the repentant and humble in heart, but is far from the arrogant. ‘All Israel’ will not be saved by Christians being in denial and ignoring wickedness. We don’t earn points for looking the other way. The ultimate issue is not about land or apples of anyone’s eye as some continue to bleat. It is about eternal life in Jesus. Israel will be saved by a spirit of repentance leading to faith in Jesus as Messiah and Christ.
The wise person lives out of Jesus in the present and creates the future. The unwise man lives out of his end-times scenario and distorts his present. There is nothing as ugly as ugliness in the name of God. Such ugliness bears the name of anti-christ because it is monstrous and devilish. If Israel really is ‘chosen’ of God, then there is a painful contrast between those who believe they have rights to land since they are ‘chosen’ and the observable wickedness of these very chosen. Obvious, that is, unless you feel you must argue that what Israel does is not wicked because it’s Israel. God’s command ‘Obey and live’ is as pertinent today as it was in the old testament because today righteousness is not defined as law but as the Person of Jesus is us and in others.
The response to this all too obvious wickedness on the part of some christians is denial and rationalization. The claim is made that abuses really did not happen or alternatively that Israel is justified in acting this way. If only it were that black and white. The trouble is there is a pattern here and it is ugly. Either way it is an affront to truth and justice. Anyone who believes in justice must ask themselves the question: ‘How come, no matter what Israel does, it is always right in the eyes of the U.S. and the powerful christian lobby that supports Israel? Is it because they can afford the luxury of not having to live there?
Anything that really has its source in God’s Son is joyful, free and reconciling. Its power is love, not force and Spirit not flesh. Its power is innately life-giving and liberating. The knowledge of good and evil, which one lives from if one lives from the old testament, draws lines between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ It dichotomizes us from them, attributing evil to ‘them’ and ‘good’ to ourselves. It’s no a coincidence that walls are built to keep themselves in and others out. If I do what I do in the name of God, then it’s a short step to treating those who oppose you like a dog. Anything that is hateful, binding and divisive is not of God. But it is frequently the result of man supposing that he is acting for god [sic]. Events in Israel and Abu Grabe reveal to the world, if not to the perpetrators that we ourselves can be participants in the same kind of evil that we attribute to others. How different is one to a terrorist just because one does things in an institutionalised way?
We know them by their fruits.
One has to wonder how Hal Lindsay’s theology would look if his roots were in Palestine and he had been brought up in Palestine. Would he and those beholden to this theology be as quick to support what Israel does in the name of God? There are Christians in Palestine and the rest of the world with views quite different to the ‘kingdoms of this world’ perspectives sourced in the United States. I am one of them.
For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people." Hebrews 10.30 NIV.
Monday, June 7, 2010
What is the church? It is the people who are joined to Jesus. It is those who believe that Jesus is their Savior and Lord. Above all the church is the community of those who live in Him and for whom Jesus is their life. Contrary to what many think the church is not the dead body of Christ, since He is resurrected and seated at the Father’s right hand in authority and power. The church is those people in whom Jesus lives and multiplies Himself. Clearly we can see that the church is more than a people who have been saved from their sins. The church is those in whom the life and accomplishments of Jesus are being imparted. Being the community of God’s daughters and sons the church is a key province of the Kingdom of God.
The word ‘Kingdom’ implies that there is more to being the church than having our sins forgiven. ‘Kingdom’ implies reign – the reign of God through Jesus and the reign of Jesus through you.
‘Those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ’ Romans 5.7 NIV.
Those who live in Jesus, the life of God and the righteousness from God reign in life. They are not held back from being who they are by the structures of man or self-appointed men. They reign over circumstances, the devil and his works. They become the people who live out of their true selves because they have dared to live out of Jesus plus nothing. They have become the sons of God rather than the sons of plod. This life in Christ and for Christ produces a nation of kings and priests. It produces people who release and multiply God’s order and people who join many to God. Living in the Mediator they mediate the saving and empowering Presence of God to the masses.
This is a ‘nation’ that transcends ethnic, denominational and national boundaries. Because this ‘nation’ lives in Christ rather than the phenomena of christianity it lives beyond limitation, increasingly rising to the task of multiplying the Spirit without limit. These ‘kings’ draw life and authority from the King of kings. They grow in their authority and multiply what He began by releasing rivers of spirit-life and multiplying His fame with signs and healing wonders. As they manifest His authority and His life the Spirit of Sonship in them brings them into their authentic identity in Christ. They live in the realization they are not evolved pond-scums and liverworts or super-intelligent monkeys but sons of God redeemed to reign on the earth.
Authority to rule over nature, demons and disease comes from one name alone: Jesus Christ. Not that people would know this if we absorbed the normal christian life. Most christians are as overcome by the world as is any non-believer because they have been depleted, robbed and neutralized by the Enemy. How? Too many of us live in ‘christianity’ instead of living in God’s Son. By living in christianity we serve ourselves up a ‘false christ.’ This is a christ who is no more than a torso because he has been shorn of his arms and legs. This feeble christ is a powerless christ because he is nothing but a projection of ourselves – but not the Son of God in whom true sons live by the Spirit. This is the scandal of ‘normal christianity,’ of the many forms of godliness without power.
While preaching in India last February, I declared the saving power of Jesus to the villagers in these terms. “Jesus Christ heals people to demonstrate His authority to forgive their sins and wash them clean. He heals their bodies to demonstrate that God loves them personally and more. He heals their bodies to show that He has power to heal their marriages, their families, their towns. The Jesus who heals in villages has power to heal the earth. This Jesus who heals is here to heal tonight. Jesus moved in and healed scores of people as we prayed over them.
We have healings in Australia. A lady reported one last week. Pretty soon, I believe the Lord will be releasing His healing power on a large scale in places like Australia, which means many of us will have to make a choice. Will be continue to dumb-down Jesus into ‘christianity’ or will be begin to multiply what He began? On the Rock of His authority and power, Jesus builds His church.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The worst thing about living in a routine, particularly the routine of ‘christianity’ or even ‘The Renewal’ is that it anaesthetizes us from the reality of what God is doing. Once you have been driving a car for some time, you can do all the motions required to drive safely and efficiently on ‘autopilot.’ In this mode you are driving perfectly safely in charge of each aspect of the car’s motion, yet you are doing all this without the effort and laboured concentration that was needed when we were learning to drive. I have driven many kilometers in the country engaged in conversation or with my own thoughts and have arrived in a town with little recollection of the features of the landscape I have passed through. I have gone from a to b without distinguishing any thing of importance. While driving I saw ‘but did not see.’
Jesus does not want us to operate in this mode in our journey with Him. Should we be like a sleep walker walking the hallways of religion with our eyes open yet asleep we will miss what God is doing and what we are meant to be doing because our focus is absorbed into our routines rather than in the reality of Him. It’s possible to be quite involved in our ‘christianity’ yet be living this way with eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear. This is the perfect way to live without discernment, discerning neither the times or the issues that God would have us deal with.
Many of us get our identity and sense of purpose out of what we are doing. But sons of God walking in revelation and discernment get identity and purpose by living in Jesus by the Spirit. In this state with eyes open and spiritual faculties alert we do what Jesus is doing because we ‘see’ what He is doing. We don’t have to be ‘Watchmen’ to know what God is doing. But we do have to live from Jesus rather than from our activities.
To live in Jesus rather than the concept of Jesus and attached constructs is to live in His Presence by the Holy Spirit – even when these constructs are revival and the modes of life in the Spirit – which unfortunately can be lived in the letter. The Presence of God mediated directly to our spirit through the Spirit of Christ provides us with light, alertness, awareness and the knowledge of what Jesus is doing now. Such revelation comes to us personally and through apostles and prophets in the body. We need to be aware of what Jesus wants to do in our individual lives, in our community and strategically in regard to the Kingdom.
We do ourselves a disservice if we become blind to what God is doing through absorption in ministry opportunities, no matter how exciting these may be. We restrict ourselves, and our usefulness to God when we remain closed, unteachable and stubbornly attached to ‘what we have always believed,’ when Jesus is attempting to bring us out of our doctrine into His. Vain repetition covers more than repetitive prayers. It means beliefs, programs, doctrines and routines that are practiced ad infinitem when it is plain that they are limited and lifeless.
By living in Jesus by the Spirit we can live with power in the world while knowing what heaven is doing, because we are living in the Presence and the light. We are not sleep walking but we are the 300 of Gideon’s conquering army.
‘The light makes everything visible. This is why it is said, "Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light"’ Eph 5.14 NLT.
Friday, June 4, 2010
I’m sitting in the sun on my front verandah on a cool winter morning in Melbourne. I write a post every day. Sometimes three - or different blogs. A friend gave me a ‘word’ one day. “Cast a wider net.” Which is why I try different kinds of blogs aimed at different segments of people. No matter who the people are I have one vision: “Every disciple multiplying what Jesus began. ‘Heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons. Tell them the Kingdom of God is among you.’”
That’s it. Demonstrate the Kingdom.
I know people who do that. We did that in India last February. We didn’t raise dead people but we met an Indian pastor had been used by Jesus to raise a dead teen the year before. Jesus is real and is waiting to reveal His authority to heal the sick and heal a sick earth through you. But we must live in the authority of sons and not in the limits of workers and slaves.
God has a plan. It’s Jesus. Not Jesus in heaven or Jesus in Africa, but Jesus in you. Jesus in your marriage and your bedroom. Jesus in your lab and around the office water cooler. That’s His Kingdom. This plan of Christ in you is revealed by God’s anointed apostles and prophets. Christ reveals this by His Spirit through those who live in Him. Pirates, hirelings and temple money changers hawk other plans, but the plan revealed by God’s Holy apostles and prophets is Christ in you and Christ with you – the reality of life and glory today, the evidence that heaven is real and operating through you ON EARTH.
All who believe, Jews and Gentiles, young and old, rich and poor can share in the their inheritance as sons. Not just ordinary daughters and sons, but sons of God who live in the Spirit to reign in their appointed places on the earth. Jesus came to bring many sons into their glory. The glory of every human being is to reflect the life of the Father as a daughter or son and so shine brightly in their unique colours of love, joy and creativity.
Christ in you is your inheritance for innocence, freedom, righteousness and sonship. Your inheritance is to live in the Spirit of sonship, which is experienced on a daily basis as we live out of the endless treasures (inheritance) that is Christ in us. A few months ago the Lord gave my daughter a dream in which church people asked, ‘Why do you shout this message so loud?’ The answer is that the majority of christians live out of christianity (read ‘all the god-stuff’ I do) and hope to please God. But the sons of God live in God’s son, please God and multiply His kingdom.’
As opposed to the finite, fading and limited nature of the law Paul spoke of God’s mysterious plan of ‘Christ in you’ as ‘endless treasures’ and ‘limitless resources’ that empower us with His mighty strength in our inner being through His Spirit. According to this plan He is in us and we are deep rooted in Him. Our being rooted and formed in Him because our heart has become God’s home. Hence our heart is a place of continual healing, renewed resolve, increasing innocence and the freshness that comes from His washing of our consciences. God’s new creation is the expression of Christ through us.
In Christ and with Christ in us, there is a light within us. This is revelation from His Presence within that dispels darkness and lies and fills us with a supernatural understanding of His huge love for us – which is to say, we gain a revelation of the unlimited expanse and fullness of His love that has embraced us and confidence to live in it.
The result of God’s plan of Christ for us and in us is a drawing and propelling of ourselves into our inheritance as daughters and sons of God. Living in Him we advance day by day into the completeness and fullness of Christ as the life and power of God’s Son fills our being. Living in the Son of Man we grow into our identity as the sons of God. As we labour in God’s Son, His burden is light, yet challenging. But He births and builds the new creation through us.
Reference: Ephesians 3.
Thursday, June 3, 201o
To live in the Spirit of Christ in the Spirit of adoption is to live as sons in the promised inheritance. This is a life of restored position, authority and power. We take our position as sons of God. Where once we were oppressed by nature, society and demons, now we grow into our inheritance of sovereignty over circumstances and Satan and his schemes - because we live in the authority of the sovereign Lord. This is not instantaneous. We grow into it as we grow in to the fullness of Christ that is already our inheritance.
But we must live in God’s provision of His Son by the Spirit. To live in a bit of law is to live all law. There is no half way. We either live in the new testament or the old. That’s the nature of the spiritual reality. We can only serve one master (Luke 16.13) and if we choose to live in law we must excel in all of it (James 2.10). Unfortunately ‘law’ holds out promise, but it is fraught with penalties as we will see below.
Paul warns us that the son of the slave woman (Sinai) cannot enjoy his inheritance of life in the Spirit. He states that those who live under law are under a curse. Their potency in God has been doused with weed killer. Paul also declares that the system of law and regulation has ended (Eph 2.15) and that our life in God’s Son has begun. So what is the innate curse of the law of sin and death? (2 Cor. 3.7) and why did the Father love us by providing a new and living way?
The Nature of the law of Sin and Death
Jesus willingly became the victim, received the oppression and became the sacrifice – according to law. But He did not do this by living out of the knowledge of good and evil, which is to say He did not live out of law. He lived out of His Father (as Adam should have). Because of this death, which is all of the above, was swallowed up in victory. By living out of His Father, Jesus delivered us from the law of sin and death to live in the Spirit of life.
The fruits of the Spirit come from Jesus, the tree of life. Jesus is the expression of God’s freedom and order in you.
The ten points above are fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil –fruit that the Father warned would bring death. But the Father’s love produced a new tree, the cross and the Branch out of which would flow the life of God to all who would eat this New and Living way. Paul declares THIS LIFE in the following terms.
“You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ” Roman 8.9 NIV.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
I’m reading a book by Wayne Jacobsen. Chapter 9 begins with a quote by Chesterton: “ The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” I want to suggest that it has been left untried because Christianity is a Person and not a religion. Millions of christians have no trouble seconding Jesus to help them ‘be good’ and do all the things they believe they should be doing. Considerably less live in Him by the Spirit to ‘do His things.’
The Father’s purpose was to send Jesus, the righteousness from God in which His people would live. The Father intended that we live in Jesus and He in us; that we would live in Him and through Him as persons loved by God and filled with His Presence. This would mean not having a righteousness of our own but a righteousness that is God’s righteousness in us. But as Chesterton laments, millions of christians continue the attempt to live in morality and good works. They live in ‘religion’ hoping that Jesus will empower their religiosity. To put it another way millions live in christianity when they could be living in Jesus. But the Father calls us to live in His Son totally.
Until we begin to live this way, rants against homosexuality, abortion, drugs and all the talk about church growth are hot air because there is no power in these things to change, to grow, to create to be the NEW CREATION. God is moral, holy and whole. But He forgives sinners, washes their filthiness and restores their lives by drawing them into His Son. Humans are potentially glorious. The means of this glory is CHRIST IN YOU, LIVING IN YOU BY HIS SPIRIT.
I cannot help but wonder how many begin to read these posts but abandon them because ‘doing the stuff’ seems safer and more logical than living in Jesus. It’s more black and white, it agrees with our indoctrination in the knowledge of good and evil, and it appeals to our pride and need to perform. Let’s face it. So many believe living in Jesus is living in law. ‘Thank you Jesus for helping me do Moses better!’ Yeah right. Unfortunately this does not produce life, love or righteousness and will never produce sons of God with authority. IT SHORT THIS NOT THE KINGDOM OF GOD’S SON.
We can opt for the fashionable and well accepted righteousness of our own or we can accept Jesus’ offer to live in Him, the living way.
Much of the effort to reform the church is an effort to reform “the stuff.” But the Father intends His sons to live in His Son – that’s His church – the ones who live in Him. The rich young ruler rejected Jesus offer to live in Him. By living in the stuff he could live in the illusion that he was righteous. He could assign parts of himself to God but keep himself for himself. By living in ourselves and our moralities, we can justify what we do and don’t do and by doing because we assume the place of God – which is the default position we are in when we attempt to be as gods to get to God. But the Father says, “Live in My Son” and Jesus says to you, “I am your life.” This [He] is the door to your victory over life’s circumstances and the schemes that the Enemy has brought against you.
Tuesday, June, 1 2010
What would you like? Two thousand bottles of your favorite wine ten percent full or twenty bottles 100% full. If you were a collector of bottles you might go for the former but if a connoisseur of wine you would decide for the latter. I recall that Jesus spoke of new wine, and new wineskins to cope with the dynamic nature of His wine. Would you like to drive a Chevy Corvette V8 running on two cylinders or eight cylinders? Do you think Jesus wants His sons filled with five percent of Himself or overflowing with 150% of Himself. Think of it this way. Christ in you is the assurance of His surpassing glory. His fullness is designed for individuals and the body. The fullness of Christ in the body is dependent on the fullness of Christ in you and I. The fullness of Christ in the body cannot spontaneously generate from individuals who live in substantial emptiness of Christ and fullness of self. Neither can the fullness of Christ be found in those who live in the letter. Under the leadership of Jesus we decrease so that He can increase. Individuals and then the church are capable of receiving the spirit of Christ without measure. ‘May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God’ Eph 3.19 NLT. Notions of limitation do not come from God. Satan will use any theory as innocent as it may appear to limit the authority of the sons of God for one simple reason. These ‘limiting notions’ make us less threat to him and allow his strongholds to remain in place. I’m not writing specifically about spiritual gifts, although these are included. Saul, a slave of the letter became a slave of Jesus and therefore a son who lived in the Spirit. His life displayed most of the gifts of the Spirit. “Greater works” are not a function of numbers. They are a function of a life lived in God by the Spirit. But my focus is more on life in the Spirit than on the gifts of the Spirit – a life in God that is by nature unlimited and unmitigated by divisions, boundaries and contradictions brought on by the letter and the flesh. Life in the Spirit is sourced in a life in God’s Son. Not in the knowledge of good and evil and not in spiritual gifts. This is why what we are capable of doing for the Lord comes under the heading of possibility – not under the heading of limitation. ‘If you can’? said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.” Mark 9.23 (NIV). Moses and his letters on stone can produce a limited glory. The miraculous was seen intermittently in the old testament. Church leaders using the motivations of the soul can evoke a short-lived glory. Diligent striving in God’s name can produce a finite glory. But only a life seeking pursuing the glory in the face of Jesus can produce unlimited glory. ‘We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord’ 2Cor. 3.18 (KJV). Nothing can substitute for life in the Spirit because only life in the Spirit is life. Life in the Spirit is God-Life seen in God’s daughters and sons. This is a life aflame with the Presence, which means that it is cleansing life, healing life, resurrecting life and restoring life. So don’t dilute it with the imaginings of men.
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‘There is one body and one Spirit one Lord, one faith, one baptism one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all’ Eph. 4.4-6 (NIV )
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This post is about living in our inheritance. Pentecost signaled the age of the new man/woman. The age in which God’s son lives in us by the Spirit. Through Jesus the Father turns around many lives, empowering us to see His Face; to enjoy His Presence and unlimited life in us and with us – all of this by the Spirit of the sovereign Lord (Isa 61, Luke 4.18).
