Mission Statement | | YouTube Material Here | |HOME| LAST MONTHS BLOG |

You may not believe in confronting people with the truth, but God certainly does. See Refiners' Fire.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

There are leaders about today who have real weapons. Armed with the firepower of heaven they advance Christ’s Kingdom on earth in humility and obedience. For them, the supremacy of Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit is a reality that the Enemy fears and the christian industry ignores. With an unremitting focus on Jesus and a hunger for His Person to dwell with them and in them they are quietly re-greening a parched land with the freshness of His Presence. His Spirit goes out from them in an invisible force field that advertises Jesus’ Presence and His authority to forgive sin, heal disease and revive blasted hopes. These people filled with the Spirit of life and wisdom are green trees in a desert of cynicism and desperation. These disciples reveal that heaven is real and that Jesus is abroad in the world because Jesus lives in them.

There are people who represent the christian industry and those who represent Jesus. There are people who say they represent Jesus but they represent the things of Jesus rather than Jesus Himself. Marketers of christianity, they are apostles of a false christ – a christ who is a projection of themselves and the mixture of christ, self and the world that the misguided call ‘the church’ and which the Lord calls Babylon.

Captive to the letter rather than to the Spirit there are people with good intentions who are still attempting to build a mechanical church in the discourse of the letter. Christ’s church is not built with human hands or heads. Where ever Christ’s church appears it appears as a function of The Presence, the heart and the Spirit and is manifest with power in the world.

Those who look intently into Jesus’ face rather than at His hands will release living water into deserts and cause dead bones to come alive.

‘If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land’ 2 Chronicles 7.14 NIV.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

In the latest Open Heaven Digest, Ron McGatlin writes, ‘Jesus is the personification of God’s love, wisdom and power.’ We could add that He is the personification of every good pure thought, every good word, every right deed, every life-giving plan and every revelation filled vision for the His church. Jesus is the completeness of God in you and the fullness of the Father’s Presence in the church. ‘Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together’ Col 1.16,17. How does Jesus hold the creation together? He is the personification of the law and all principles by which the universe has being and purpose. He is the law of the Spirit of life. He is also love and the personification of relationship. The church is His Body.

Christ’s new creation is a realm in which all who believe are restored to live in God. As we live, move and have our being in Him, rivers of living water flow from us. Our strategies, plans, schemes and procedures are sourced in His life and they multiply His life. Life in Jesus is not some clever re-invention of Moses and his laws. Those laws are for sinners and rebels – those who in their lawlessness need to know that they are accountable to God. But those who believe God live in Jesus and He through them. They are not of the world, but in Him they overcome the world and inherit a Kingdom. Significantly it is those who are humble enough to obey God who inherit the earth and reign in the domain God has given them.

Jesus says, ‘I will build My Church.’ He builds it by joining together those who have joined themselves to Him in humility and obedience. Co-workers with Jesus do not use Jesus to build the church. He uses them. The wisdom and planning they exude and impart to others comes not from regulation, church growth theory or adherence to rules. This is an overflow of the Spirit of Christ in them. God’s promise to inherit the earth is realized among those who are not inhabited by laws, theories and performance motivations. As with Abraham the promise is fulfilled in those who believe God and step into Christ. This inheritance comes to those who live in God and trust in Jesus. Sons of God, living in the Spirit experience sonship. They reign in the domain in which God created them to have authority and they advance the Kingdom of God. They are co-creators with God.

‘Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself’ Eph 2.20 NLT.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

All things hold together in Jesus. Yet people do not cease to commit their all to things. As such those of us who are absorbed in the church, would do better to find ourselves absorbed in the Son of God. Those who worship the Christ are those who have His keys of authority. It is they who will be used by Jesus as He builds His church.

Jesus said, ‘I give you authority.’ All who live in Christ by the Spirit may exercise this authority over the Enemy and the world. But none of this is open to those who live and practice the culture of the scribes. No ‘scribe’ can seize this day or do violence to the kingdoms of evil. Each one of us has the potential to multiply what Jesus began in the power of the Spirit. But none of us can reach this potential if we live in christianity, performance, churchianity, the law of Moses, the letter or the principles of humanism. The key to authority is a life lived in God’s Son who is the beginning, the end, the Completeness of God.

Should we be steeped in ‘religion,’ or intellectualism our authority will be hobbled. Horses that are hobbled have the energy and speed of a horse but they cannot move far or fast. They could never fight a war. People need to know that Tiger Woods did not only hurt those he loved. He sinned against God. The ‘Liberalism’ of academia not only blinds us to the dimensions of good and evil but extinguishes our ability to overcome evil and fight for the good. Stifled by such burdens we will not be able to ‘see’ or believe sufficiently in Christ or ourselves to walk on water or break open the strongholds of the Enemy. The issue here is authority and not just any authority. This is the authority of the sons of God who live in the Son of God with boldness and rejoicing.

Living in Jesus is not living in God’s Son to help us be a performer or law-keeper. We live in Him so that He can live through us. So that people can see that He is here and His Kingdom is real. There’s a church that He builds that is a replica of Himself. Here people are healed, demons are driven out, the dead are raised, lives are put together, marriages are saved because the King of the Kingdom is there. We can lack all these and have a church but is certainly not HIS CHURCH!

What does living in God’s Son mean? This is a life that is total. It is what Paul called a living sacrifice. It is a life given totally to Jesus in the manner in which Jesus gave Himself totally to His Father. It is more than fasting. It is a fasted life. A life absorbed in Jesus is a life given to God to learn belief and trust of the kind that Eve abandoned and which Adam gave up. It is union with the One who lived in His Father. It is to live as a Son of God.

Living in God’s Son involves a high appreciation of God’s grace. In Christ grace is conceived not just as the covering of sins. It is seen for what it is, post cross and post Pentecost. This the supernatural impartation of the Father’s life and authority to His daughters and sons. He who has the Son has life. But she who has the law does not. Those who live under law live under a curse. Much of this curse is to live a limited life without authority and produce trees with much foliage and no fruit.

LIFE: What should we understand by life? The life Jesus spoke of is as follows:

Righteousness, holiness, wholeness, love, authority, connection, relationship, power over the enemy and circumstances and restoration of KINGDOM AUTHORITY. This is the life that is ours ‘to the full.’ To live in Jesus is to have the Spirit without limitation.

There are people whose demolition of the works of evil and the kingdoms of darkness are striking. Satan really does fall from heaven. I mean people like Roland and Heidi Baker. They reveal God’s supernatural power because they are conduits of the law of the Spirit of Life – a limitless and unfettered power that flows from a Person, that flows out of God, rather than from the words and letters of death that Moses wrote on stone. (2 Cor 3.7) or the mumbo-jumbo that flows like a river of sand from today’s scribes. Authority belongs to those who live in the New Man, the New Way that is alive, rather than in the old Adam.

The man living in law is a divided man living in the should and the should not, the might and the might not, the possible and impossible and the rashness and timidity of a life lived in the Great Division: The Knowledge of good and evil. Caught between the real and the ideal he lives in dilemmas of uncertainty. Am I accepted? Have I crossed all the ‘t’s or have I not? Can I trust my heart or should I rely on my head? A divided man is a weak and fractured man, unsure of God, unsure of Himself, fearing Satan and hoping for the authority that is just beyond his reach. But the man who lives in Jesus is ONE NEW MAN.

Authority belongs to sons, not to workers and slaves or the veiled and bound. Let’s be clear. Heidi and Roland would not be doing the works of power they do if they belonged to denominations of ‘the law and the letter,’ if their authority was muddied by humanism, or if their actions were the product of church growth theory. They don’t live out of laws and formulas. Their authority is not as the scribes. Their kind of authority is wielded by those who have moved beyond the inventory of good and evil to move in the Presence of God.

The sons of God, His representatives on earth live out of Christ in the Spirit of Life that OVERCOMES DEATH. I do not mean our eventual extinction, although this is included. I mean the death that Adam introduced by opening the door to the knowledge of good and evil, its law of sin and death and its letter-mongering in the name of God.

To live in the Presence is to live in the Word. This Word has a Name; a Name that is as high above the letter as the heavens are above the earth. This living word is Jesus. He is the One “by whom all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.” Col 1.16-18 NIV.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Over a year ago I attended a seminar on life in the Spirit. Here it was asserted that by living in the Spirit we are able to live out the law of Moses with success. The error in this teaching is that the law of Moses, sourced in the context of Eve’s disobedience ended at the cross. Since then our privilege has been to live out of Jesus. Jesus ministers so we can live out of Him.

When Jesus died, a set of laws framed in the context of the knowledge of good and evil that had been chosen by Adam came to an end. From now on man could live in a new Way. He would live in God’s Son as a son. Man would live in a kind of law that was not expressed as rules but as the Spirit of Life. A Person who would be written onto one’s heart and into our being. This is not words on stone. It is the living Word – the Person of God’s Son who is The Word, the law of the Spirit of life and the righteousness sent from God.

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ John 1.1 NIV.

Rules have a function, but they function best when they are subservient to the human spirit rather than superior to it. To live out of rules is always to be less than you could have been. Take a writer for instance. Good writing flows out of the writer’s person. Sure such a writer has learned to read and write, knows the rules of syntax and grammar, but the truly gifted writer does not write out of these. She writes in the flow of her spirit. The essence of the fall is not only that man rebelled against creation. It is that the rule, the concept and the structure began to rule over those who created them. People began to live out of rules, concepts and philosophies and because of this they multiplied death – an attitude that can be seen in many burocracies, as well as in the growing chaos of the global financial crisis.

I don’t know if you have noticed but some of the most bound people are those who do not even believe in God. Yet they are held captive to their own ideas, politically correct notions, life commands passed down to them by their mothers, the latest diets and the utterances of Ophra Winfrey’s and Dr Phil. Try as hard as we like, we can never exceed ourselves by living out of rules.

There are musicians who are pedestrian and those who are gifted. The truly gifted play their instruments out of their spirit releasing a flow of melody they sweeps us along in the beauty and depths of its currents. The ordinary have mastered notes and theory and notes and theory have mastered them. They are good at producing sounds but never music that is inspired. The truly inspired release from their spirit a river of sound and life that sweeps us to new heights. In the Kingdom realm such people are swimming in the river of God and releasing rivers of living water.

Contrary to what is often supposed, Jesus lived out of His Father and not out of rules. It is true that Jesus kept the law meticulously but only because these laws given in the context of the knowledge of good and evil were swallowed up by a life lived in God. This is another way of saying that death was swallowed up in victory – the victory of obedience to the Father and a life lived out of the Father. Jesus did not constantly refer to the law or live out of the Ten Commandments. Jesus was one with His Father and lived out of His Father as a Son. Consequently He was the son of God with authority – not as the law mongers and scribes. Jesus lived in harmony with God and with nature. As a result He ruled over nature and subdued Satan.

Many christians impose the old testament on the new. They live out of an old testament mentality and impose this mentality on the entire Bible. ‘Letter’ is embedded in their being and they read the new testament through this filter. Since Jesus, the entire Bible should be interpreted through Him. This way the letter is subservient to Jesus and becomes alive through Him. This transforms it into The Word, rather than a rather long compendium of rules and precepts.

The Father created humanity to live out of God. By remaining in God as a son, man would be able to live out of Himself. He would not live in selfishness or self-destruction but would find his true self and reign under God for the creation. While he could avail himself of information and learn the rules behind the creation he would not live out of rules. He would live in harmony with them. But not by being a rule-monger. He would live in the Father as a son. Aligned with the Father, man would be aligned with the creation and more. As a son of God he would rule over creation.

But all of this was aborted when Satan’s plan found success. Because God loves the world and all that is in it God produced a new and living way. In the power of the Spirit Mary became pregnant with God’s Son. The Son of God lived within Mary for nine months. The prophetic meaning of this for us is that by living in Christ we are pregnant with God’s Son, constantly filled with infinite possibility and able to birth Him in multiple ways and means into the world. By this means we can birth a new world. By living in Christ and having Christ within the productions of our spirit become Christ in the world.

If you like you can abort all this, abort Christ in you, abort the new and living way and revise Him into the old. You can and remain in law, tied to the knowledge of good and evil, diluting the new covenant with the old and shackling yourself to the identity you think you have by being a branch grown from the root of your denomination. But the Lord has re-created you to live in the Spirit. You have a destiny to reign, because those who live in the Spirit are the sons of God.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

The academic man lives out of things he knows. The philosophical man lives out of the things he thinks. Like Descartes, he says in his heart, ‘I think therefore I am.’ But the spiritual man says I am because I am in God.

The business man may live out of the projects he initiates and the wealth he acquires. The religious man lives out of God things and repetitive rites. But the Godly woman lives out of Jesus.

The anxious, and the agitated churchophile lives out of christianity but the sons of God live out of God’s Son and with authority – not as the scribes.

Adam and Eve originally lived in God. They lived out of His being in intimate fellowship as daughter and son. In purity and innocence they lived out his laws, unconscious that there were any. They simply lived in God as sons.

Unaware of good and evil they intuitively lived out good in their work, play and relationships. They lived in holiness intuitively because THE LIVED IN GOD. Undivided between should and should not they just were. They were who they were in righteousness because they lived in I AM.

The Father’s laws were written on their hearts because He was in them and they were in Him. But things changed after the fall because they had begun to live in themselves. Good was no longer in them. It was outside them and always something to which they must aspire.

The prophet Jeremiah foretold an age when the sons of man would be liberated from their split personalities and dichotomized lives. They would be re-made as one new man in their innermost being and one new man in their relationships. Through Jesus, God would impart Himself into the core of their being and they would become whole.

‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts’ Jer 31.33 NIV.

It is this passage that is quoted by the author of Hebrews with one variation (Heb 10.16). He uses the word ‘laws.’ Unlike Jeremiah the writer understood that the laws written on the heart in the new covenant is not the law of Moses. He knew that these laws were actually the Person of Jesus imparted to our hearts by the Spirit.

He knew that Jesus is the righteousness of God in you! He knew that you would receive a heart of flesh by receiving the humanity and Godliness of Jesus into your being. Rather than your heart being a gravel pit as a result of a new version of Moses law multiplied by christ [sic] something superb would take place. You become a new creation man regenerated from the heart by the life-giving Spirit of Christ.

Attempt to live in Jesus and Moses and our sonship is veiled, our wholeness is undermined, our outlook is brittle and our feet are part iron and part clay. But Ezekiel foretold the newly created ‘you’ when he wrote,

‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws’ Ez 36.26,27 NIV.

But these laws are not the laws of Moses multiplied by Christ. They are Christ’s life infused into every aspect of our existence. You have begun to swim in God’s river of life. This is why Paul wrote, ‘Clearly, you are a letter from Christ .. This "letter" is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts’ 2 COR 3.3 NLT.

We get to have hearts of flesh because God has removed Moses and replaced the law of stone with Jesus.

When Jesus died the Judaic system ended. When Jesus rose from the grave the new creation began – a new creation in which we live in God by living in Jesus. The righteousness, wholeness and authority that we live in today is not a righteousness that comes from the earth through Adam and Moses. It is a righteousness not from earth but from heaven. It is a righteousness sent from God.

‘But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago’ Rom 3.21 NLT.

The religious man lives out of himself or the law. But a son of God lives out of God’s Son.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

What I wrote about ‘the letter’ ON THURSDAY, MARCH 25, applies equally to the things we do. To briefly recap, I wrote that information about right and wrong on its own is not enough to produce the life of God. Even when it is information presented sincerely and sourced in the Bible. Truth has power when it is spirit and truth, when its source is God and when it is spoken out by persons living in God. In this situation it is the word of God. This is not an addition to the Bible but such words are alive and carry His Presence with the power to accomplish that which they have articulated.

Paul wrote, ‘our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit.’

The same is true of the things we do. Our works can be alive or dead. They can be accomplished in the Spirit or in the flesh. We avoid dead works and fleshly activity by a discipline of living in Jesus’ Presence by the Spirit. We can affirm this as we wake at night, at the start of the day, during the day and before we go to sleep. All we have to say is, ‘Thank you Jesus for living in me. I choose to walk, live and work in your Presence.’

The anointing comes to those who desire it. Christ’s Presence comes to those who covert His Presence in them. He does not come by default or because we are engaged in good works. He comes when we value Him more than the oxygen we breathe. Filled with ourselves our works can be dead. They are particularly dead if we are acting out of a performance motivation or as a means to advancing our status. Let’s be clear on this. To do good apart from the indwelling of the life the Spirit of God is to alter the ratio of good to evil. But is not to enhance the Kingdom of God.

The things we do among the people are meant to be apostolic, which is to show that we are indeed sent by God and that we are the Representative of Jesus Christ and not merely of ourselves, which is why Paul wrote.

‘The things that mark an apostle-signs, wonders and miracles-were done among you with great perseverance.’

The Kingdom of God’s Son is not a change in the configuration of good and evil in any location. After bush fires and floods many people perform acts of kindness in feeding people and rebuilding dwellings. Most of these people have no belief in Jesus. Their works do good and mitigate evil but that’s all they do. They do not expand the Kingdom of God. Am I saying we need not engage in such work. Certainly not. I am saying that in everything we do our hands should be channels of the Spirit of God, mingled where appropriate with the exposure of Christ’s love and power with signs following.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Paul, writing in Romans 1.1-3 teaches that there is the law implied and the law written. The latter was the Decalogue and the former the law sourced in the person of God and which fills the universe. This ‘law’ is as visible to the unbeliever as it is to the believer because it speaks from without and from within, testifying of Godliness and condemning wickedness. It is an emanation of the Spirit of God.

Paul continues and declares that God has made known a way of being right with Him without keeping the laws found in the law of Moses. We are, he says, made right with God by placing our trust in Jesus Christ (Rom 3.21,22). Jesus is both the means of making us righteous and Righteousness itself. The law that Paul refers to above; the law that was not written in the Decalogue, yet which can be known by all and judges all, is The Word. It is the Word that always was and the Word that came to earth in the person of Jesus as embodied righteousness – the new and Living Way. A new way of being Godly is revealed which is CHRIST IN YOU by the Spirit of Life.

The New and Living Way had been foretold by the Passover rites with the blood on the door of the home and the eating of the perfect lamb. This was reinvented as the fullness of God in Christ in the ceremony of the Lord’s supper, where we celebrate the truth that we are not only washed by Jesus’ blood but sustained by His life. We eat Him!

There are many gods that devour people but in God’s Way we eat Jesus who said, ‘Those that eat Me will live because of Me.’ Many rob themselves by taking this to mean eternal life. It does mean that, but eternal life to be eternal has to operate now, which it does as His life imparts God’s life and righteousness to our mortal bodies.

‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world’ John 6.52 NIV.

Many of us should ask ourselves the question: Why am I living this safe yet powerless life? Jesus gave the answer, declaring ‘The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort [the way of Adam and the law] accomplishes nothing. The very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life’ John 6.51 NLT’.

‘Spirit and life.’ Jesus is spirit and life. Jesus is the new way of living in God. Jesus emphatically declares that those who eat Jesus do the will of God. That is they keep His ways and His laws. They have everlasting life because this life wells up inside them. The will of God is lived out by ‘living Jesus.’ His life becomes our thought, our glance, our reflection, our choice, our steps, our speech and our morality. Jesus becomes the righteousness of God lived through us. ‘The Word becomes flesh.’ This Word is your flesh. Christ in you is not only the hope of glory. This becomes our daily reality.

THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2010

There is a kind of righteousness known as ‘self righteousness.’ We hate it in others and are less able and willing to see it in ourselves. This version of righteousness became the mode and the fashion when Eve embraced the suggestion that she could be like God independently of God. ‘Self righteousness comes from the fall and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The issue before God’s people today is this: Are we going to live in The Branch or in the tree of death?

‘The letter’ is a more subtle version of the knowledge of good and evil. People read the Bible in the letter and write commentaries in the letter. But they do not release life because they do not release The Presence. The fact that the letter kills should alert us to the fact of its origin – the tree of death. The letter is subtle because it presents as humanitarian advancement, religious well doing, a Bible study on some doctrine or even a call to repentance. Whatever the case the result is always DULL. As I said, ‘the letter’ is a child of the knowledge of good and evil.

There is a striking difference between a teaching that is delivered in the letter and teaching that is delivered in the Spirit. The contrast is as simple as it is profound. In the latter case the teaching may as well have been delivered by God Himself because it sounds like God speaking through a human instrument. Hearts sensitive to God and seeking God will pick this up. Hearts that hear such teaching know that it is God reaching them, touching them, beckoning them to enter fellowship and intimacy with Him. Teaching that occurs in the Spirit employs words, phrases, sentences that are alive. This is because what is being spoken is THE WORD and not the letter. IT IS THE SPIRIT AND NOT THE HEAD. It is the Kingdom and not intellectualism. IT IS THE PRESENCE AND LIFE OF GOD.

I’ll put it another way. Teaching in the letter you are telling of an experience. But in the Spirit you are the Experience. You convey the experience of God.

Why such brightness in the Spirit and conviction in the heart? Because the teaching has been delivered in God. Principles have been uttered by a person who is one with Jesus and who is an instrument of His Spirit. When we live in the Spirit we speak in the Spirit. Live in Jesus instead of in law and letter and we live in spirit and in truth: This is the truth that ‘I and the Father are one.’

It is necessary to be in God to practice and preach the righteousness of God. My point is that it is not sufficient to be right. A list of do’s and don’ts disconnected from the Presence of God can be wrong even if they are ‘right.’ Why? They come from the tree with much foliage and no figs. Prophetically Jesus declared this tree to be barren forever. It represents a righteousness of a kind - BUT NOT THE RIGHTEOUSNESS THAT COMES FROM GOD. That righteousness is a Person. Your glory and the glory of the Kingdom explained is “Christ in you.”

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

What is Judaizing? The author of Hebrews wrote his letter because of recidivism. There were Jews who could not believe that God had called them to live in Jesus rather than in their religious culture that preceded Him. Paul fought the same battle on behalf of Christ and the people He had set free. Paul’s thorn in the flesh, it is thought, was the persecution that came to him as a result of the constant offence caused by his promotion of Christ and His cross as The Only Way. Too many people wanted a ‘way’ that placed value on their own efforts.

It is true that there is value in understanding the types and ceremonies that the Lord gave Israel. All of them pointed to Jesus and when understood correctly emphasize the glory of His sacrifice and the salvation He has given us. But these rites have no ability to save or empower. Regenerative life flows exclusively from the person of Jesus. That power is available to all who believe in Jesus, who are intimate with Him and who are filled with the life of the Holy Spirit – whether they are familiar with Hebrew rites or not. Paul had to tell the Jews that while Jews may find benefits from their heritage there would be people who would live in Jesus very successfully entirely without it.

Today there is an attempt to find strength in the neo-Judaism. It is purported and floated that Hebrew rites have an ability to empower our lives. We need to see this as a disguised attempt to enhance our performance through religion. It is resorted to by some who have never lived in the power of the Holy Spirit and others who have never actually lived in the new and living way of the New Covenant. If religion is really good for us then we need to find more bits of the cross and relics of Christ’s garments and venerate them!

Why would you want to live in a shadow instead of the reality of Christ? You would do this if you had never lived in the fullness of His Person through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I’ve written before that the lives of those who live in Christ in the power of the Spirit, as compared to those who attempt to live out of the Bible are as different as day is from night. Only the Spirit gives life. The letter kills. Live in Christ by the Spirit of Christ and you will be enjoying a new and living way. You will be a son of God because you live in God’s Son. You will a enjoy boldness and joy and victory over your circumstances that the religious just don’t have.

I know of people who live in the old covenant. Some of them operate in the gifts of the Spirit in a limited way. But they lived fenced in lives, continually falling victim to their circumstances. Their attitude is to resist change and opportunity because at heart they do not live before an Open Door. They have chosen to live out of a closed one.

There is another way of living in the shadow instead of living in the reality of Christ. This is living in grace without obedience. It’s the other cancer - the cancer of license and indulgence in which Christ’s grace is everything and His life nothing. A true disciple does not live for self with grace added. A true disciple lives not only in sins forgiven. She lives in Christ’s obedience received and imparted into the heart and the legs.

Jesus does not exist to do your will or make your life easy. But we exist for Him.

A true disciple has no life of his own because he is a living sacrifice totally given to Christ. A true disciple is dead. Dead to self but very much alive to God. Christ’s grace covers all. But His blessing does not. His favour and blessing, His empowerment and the breath of His resurrection life – the wind of His Holy Spirit is for one group of people: The obedient. None of us are 100% obedient. But true disciples are advancing from glory to glory as the fullness of Christ is imparted to their bodies by the Spirit of Christ.

‘My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ Gal 2.20 NLT.

TUESDAY, March 23, 2010

When I was a youth popular wisdom was that the key to a spiritual life was prayer and Bible study. A spiritual life for me in those days was basically a religious life in which one avoided sin. Today I see a spiritual life as the new and living way, by which I mean that I am called to live as a man in the Son of Man by the Spirit.

In the Old Testament Israel was repeatedly called to obey and live. That is, obey the laws of God and live. Obedience is equally as important in the New Testament, but it takes a different form. Those who obey God’s command live in God’s Son: ‘Those who obey God's commandments remain in fellowship with him, and he with them. And we know he lives in us because the Spirit he gave us lives in us’ 1 John 3.24, NLT. Repeatedly the Father commanded, ‘This is My Son. Listen to Him.’ It is significant that when the Father declared this, Jesus shone with glory. Why? Because Christ in us is God’s Plan. This is the hope and the reality of the glory of God’s sons who in Christ are advancing from glory to glory.

Prayer and Bible study are disciplines that flow from our life in Jesus. But as a formula they cannot produce life, which leads me to today’s point. There is a vast difference between life in the Spirit and life in the letter. Live the letter and we die.We can read the Bible in the letter or we can read it in the Spirit. Reading the Bible in the Spirit we are living in God and seated in God’s Presence. His Presence surrounds us and is in us. The Holy Spirit is on us. Reading the written word we are swallowed up in His Person - the Living Word. God is speaking to us and through His word. Truth is being revealed. Things old and new come to light and a light is shone on our path. To read the Bible in the Spirit is to read it from our position in God. Not from our position in the head. This is a thing of the heart and the spirit – your spirit in His; His Spirit engulfing yours; your life in His and your prayer chair surrounded by His real Presence.

When a group are reading the Bible in His Presence and surrounded by the Spirit of Christ, a scripture that is read out is more than words and more than something to be merely understood or analyzed. The very reading of these scriptures, clothed in His Presence accomplishes its meaning and contents. These empowered words are alive. Words read in the Spirit have prophetic power to bring themselves to pass in the believer’s life.

Disciplines of the letter originate in the knowledge of good and evil and are sourced from the head. Descartes wrote, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Many christians think that they can think God into being. But what they get is not God but a projection of themselves. If our mode is the letter we will imagine that because we think and reason from the Bible, we have in a sense made Him to be or brought Him among us. As a result we might have letter based gatherings entitled, ‘Jesus in the Book of Romans.’ But the reality is that the book of Romans is in Jesus. The Bible is in Jesus when you are in Jesus. We are in Jesus when the Holy Spirit surrounds us. The Holy Spirit is Present when we live in His baptism.

God was there before there was you and before there was a Bible. God is. He is I AM. The believer is rooted in God or she should be. God and ourselves are revealed in His Presence. In His Presence He becomes known and we begin to understand ourselves. Reading the Bible in His light (Presence) we see light and are enlightened by His revelation. Our worlds begin to shine with His glory. We are because God is. We know because we know God and are known in His Presence. There’s something more important than ‘having the truth.’ This is the Truth having you!’

We are more than the constructions of our heads and so is God. To read the Bible in the letter which has its roots in the knowledge of good and evil is to attempt to construct God out of ourselves and become Godly. But actually God is already with you and in you. He is His Presence. Not your analysis of Him. So ‘Don’t say in your heart, ‘Who will go up to heaven?’ (to bring Christ down to earth). And don’t say, ‘Who will go down to the place of the dead?’ (to bring Christ back to life again)’ Rom 10.7,8. Paul wrote, ‘Pray in the Spirit on all occasions.’ We might add ‘read, study, live in the Spirit’ as well.

Monday, March 22, 2010

There is something more important than charitable work, christian doctrine, and developing community. It is seeking Jesus’ Face. An unremitting focus on Jesus and His presence – an attitude of worship will bring all of the above. But a focus on any one of them or all of them will not bring the Presence of God. Thanks to the cross and the ministry of the Spirit, the Presence of Jesus has already been placed in us and around us. We just have to believe and live in what God in Christ has done. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. In Christ we are in the Father as sons – and with authority. Not as the promoters of religion.

Christianity without the presence of God is ‘religion.’ Religion is by definition the things of God minus the Presence of God. It is the attempt to bring God down to us and us up to God. But He is already for us and with us. We were made to live in God and redeemed to live in God’s Son. Jesus is the new and living way of forgiveness with God, union with God and the holiness of God in you. The righteousness of God is also a man – Jesus. He saves the people from their sins and restores to then the spirit of sonship. This is the daily reality that God is your Father and you are His Son.

The righteousness of God can be described in one word: Jesus. The law of God can described in one word: Jesus. The wholeness and completeness of God can be described in one word: Jesus. Jesus is God’s law in you: The law of the spirit of life. But this is not the law of Moses, the source of which is Adam’s disobedience and the knowledge of good and evil. Your Source is the Presence of God in Christ – the Godness and goodness of God, and the righteousness of man. This is the ground of your ‘being. This is your life in the Spirit, the source of which is Christ’s obedience which won for you a new life in God. You can live in God again by living in Jesus. Jesus lives in you by the power of the Holy Spirit. You are holy because He is holy.

Cancer is an excellent metaphor of sin because cancer cells are a perverse form of normal cells that combine together as out of control tissue that eventually destroys the host. Recently the Lord showed one of His spokesmen that there are two cancers in the Body of Christ that cripple it with disease. One is law and the fresh impetus given to it by the recent outbreak of Judaizing. The other is lawlessness caused by cheap grace and a false christ of indulgence. Jesus has life in Himself but we do not. To be OK with sin is to die in it. To live through law is to be choked by it.

The old testament points to the new but the new does not point to the old. The law points to Jesus but Jesus is not a doorway to law. Jesus draws attention to Himself and the Father. He is the new and living way. All other ways are dead ways. Jesus does not excuse sin. Sin kills people. Jesus died so that we can be forgiven and more. He died and lives so that His Presence would burn sin away and impart His purity! Jesus takes away the sin of the world so that sons can reign in the world.

We need to understand that living in law, tradition and performance is lawlessness, just as using Jesus as a means of indulgence is lawless. Both these cancers are lawless because they cannot produce the righteousness of God in man. They produce chaos. But there is a way of health and life. This way is Jesus.

‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!’ 2 Cor 5.18 NIV. Healthy spiritual tissue is Christ in you, Christ as you. This is the healthy Body of Christ.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Yesterday I wrote about spiritual intelligence – the ability to make sense of God and what He would have us do. Spiritual intelligence has more to do with the heart than the head. This kind of ‘nous’ always starts in the heart but it has to make its way to the head and from there to the life. Truth has more to do with ‘being’ than it does with mere ideas – which is why Jesus came and lived out of His Father on earth to illustrate the principle that in God, we really do live, move and have our being to be fully fulfilled in our purposes as sons of God.

‘God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it’ Gen 1.28 NIV.

To live in God’s Son is to live in confidence and certainty. In Jesus we are placed back where we belong to realize our sonship and daughtership in holiness and fruitfulness. Our task as sons is to heal, restore and replenish the earth. Many of us are subdued by sin, people, circumstances and natural disasters. But even here were there is a constant interplay between forces of good and evil, we can triumph. Significantly Jesus victory over sin, the devil, evil people and the world was accomplished as He consigned His Spirit to God and died. Those who are dead to self are alive to God, known by God and carriers of His authority.

As we learn to live in God rather than in ourselves we overcome evil with good and multiply God’s good in unpromising places. Subduing the earth is not ruling over others, robbing goodness from the earth and turning it into money. Our role is to subdue the Enemy and His works as Jesus did. Jesus advertised His Kingdom of forgiveness, health and joy by overturning the work of the Enemy and causing demons to flee. He filled the space vacated with the life of God. Jesus forgave and healed the sick as a demonstration of His power to heal and forgive a rebellious world.

Jesus lived totally in His Father in joy and confidence, always certain of a good outcome and totally secure in the purposes of His Father. He would say, ‘I and My Father are one and I am doing what I see My Father doing.’ Those who believe will do the same. Our calling is not simply to go to church or plant churches. Our calling is to live as sons in God’s sons and plant Jesus as the Prince of Life that He is. In this we are multiplying the sovereignty of Jesus in the power of the Spirit and overturning the works of the enemy where they are found as sin, greed, disease, crime, demonic oppression and the Babylonic systems and culture this world.

Quite a few of God’s people labour in leg irons and chains because their faith is actually unbelief and they have made a life-style out of it. This is why they are perpetually engaged in Bible study but never break out of their religious cage to do the mighty works that are recorded everywhere in the Bible. Since their focus is ‘not sinning’ they live in negativity, fear and doubt and are constantly confused by religious spirits. They are more confident of the devil’s power to deceive than they are of the power of the Son of God to reveal His Kingdom of power and light - as a result they live in deception. What’s worse is they don’t escape from sin!

‘Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God's grace’ Romans 6.14 NLT.

If this is us we need to repent and open our lives to the indwelling of the resurrected Jesus and begin to live in Him and His performance instead of attempting to live in ours. Graduate from dead works to live in God and you will find that the fullness of God that is Jesus is also the fullness of God that dwells in you! Live works will flow from you as a river. Some one wrote, “All who break through fear and doubt will have the greatest faith and be trusted with the greatest authority. The realm of the Spirit is more real than the earth.” This is why to live in the Spirit is to be more real than living in the letter. Live in the letter and you will be a cardboard lion. Live in the Spirit and you will be a real lion and your roar will shake the earth and topple strongholds.

‘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.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

You’ve heard of ‘emotional intelligence.’ Perhaps there is such a thing as ‘spiritual intelligence’ Someone wrote last year that spiritual connections that are obvious to some are not obvious to all. I know however that spiritual insight has little to do with IQ. Some of the brightest can be spiritually dense, while people whose intellectual capacity has been diminished severely can enjoy speedy and deep comprehension of the relationship between God and ourselves. Not for nothing does Jesus say that we need the innocence of little children to enter the Kingdom of God.

So why do some remain of the church yet outside the Kingdom, banging their heads against what they perceive to be a brick wall? Why is the realm of the Spirit are mystery to some? Why are some continually engaged in fruitless endeavors? Well there’s humility, a quality which enables us to be teachable and think outside the square. Related to this is the issue of mind-set. The door to the Kingdom is narrow. It’s a small slit actually. The Kingdom of the spirit can only be perceived in the spirit and the door to this perception is the heart.

Many of us imagine we are spiritual when in fact we are religious. We think we are spiritual when in fact we are only human and rather more humanistic and earth oriented than Godly. In this state we have more in common with the kingdom of Egypt than the Kingdom of God. Here we are more at one with the golden calf than the presence of God. God is not bound by the thoughts of man but a man centered on his own thoughts is bound – bound in his concept of God and bound in his concept of himself and others. Genuine open-mindedness belongs to those for whom Jesus is the center and they are His slave.

The ability to see in the spirit occurs when we are born again and if we are born again. This is more than a change from a bad morality to a better one. It is a change of ‘being’ bringing with it a change in perception. We change from being a son of the earth to a son of God. With it comes the realization that the world is more than it seems. It has a spiritual component that transcends matter and mind. To live in the Spirit of Christ is to make a transition from not seeing to seeing. In the latter we grow in the ability to see things as they are rather than as they appear. We enter the realm of revelation not only as vision and dream but in the ability to see the real nature of any landscape that is before us.

There are those more interested in God’s hands than His heart. Given to action rather than stillness with God they are more interested in what He can do for them rather than what they can be for Him. Knowing Jesus and living in His Presence is not their first priority. More ‘present’ to these people is the presence of themselves.

More crucial in its effect than any of the above is the position of the heart. The heart is where all other issues have their source. Does the heart exist for self or does it wait on the prerogatives of the Father? The answer to this question determines not only our acuteness in spiritual understanding. It determines the kinds of people we seek advice from, make friends with and the kinds of people to which we gravitate. One who is using the name of Jesus to promote her own name will always have a skewed view of the nature of God’s kingdom. Such a person will live in confusion and rob life from those unfortunate enough to come into her orbit. Nothing dulls our spiritual intelligence as much as a life lived in the flesh. Such a life can have us imagining that we are some kind of spiritual leader with keen insight, when in fact we are exceptionally dull of sight, dogged with unbelief and squawking nothings from the rear of the pack.

To be a son of God is to be in the process of having our faculties as sons restored. It is learning to hear instead of being spiritually deaf. It is learning to see rather than being a blind leader. To become a son is to become increasingly clothed with humility and as a result receiving the authority of God. The poor in spirit see God and the meek or self-effacing inherit the Kingdom of God.

‘Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them’ Acts 6.3 NIV.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

I was prompted to write this post by an article I read in the paper. Recently in Denmark princess Mary created a storm in a tea-cup by dining with a socialite convicted of possessing cocaine. ‘A "furious" Queen Margrethe issued a stern warning to Mary over the affair, the magazine Se Og Hoer reported."As the future Queen of Denmark, she's not allowed to have any contact with a person convicted for possession of drugs," editor Kim Henningsen told the Sunday Herald Sun. More below.

The knowledge of good and evil, known also as the law of sin and death, upholds good, deplores evil, demands performance and failing that demands death. The truth is that all who choose to live in this sphere condemn and live in condemnation because this is a tree of condemnation. This tree is the source of the various systems of caste, class, snobbery, gossip mongering, shunning and sending to Siberia. Jesus cut down the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by dying on it. He was shamed and shunned so all can be included and accepted as God’s sons in God’s House.

Jesus was crucified. What happened to Jesus was what should have happened to you and I. By rights each of us deserves to be declared guilty, clothed in shame and executed. I’ll say it again. Under the auspices of this tree the wages for non-performance is death together with its lesser deaths and tortures. I mean judgment, being found wanting, being found out, exposed, stigmatized, shamed, cut off and ostracised. All the stuff the teachers of the law were heaping on the women exposed as an adulterer. These teachers were not particularly heinous. They were just being consistent with the law of sin and death. What they did not expect, until Jesus wrote in the sand, was that they were just as deserving of judgment as the woman they wanted to stone!

If we live in law we are all cursed under judgment. If we live under law we will judge. Live out of the knowledge of good and evil and we will make distinctions and classification and live out of them. Live from performance and we will judge the actions of ourselves and others. Often we will judge wrongly and inconsistently. I wonder if those who caused the global financial crisis live in as much stigma as the robbers and thieves who end up in jail?

But we were made to live in God and since the cross we have been re-birthed to live in Jesus and His grace and draw sinners to Him. To live in Jesus is not to be casual about evil. But neither is it to live in condemnation, pious snobbery or holier than though separation from those who have offended God, society and the church. We live in God but we still sin. We live in God’s good but we are still defective. But we can live in the tree of life because God’s grace is limitless and His blood washes away all sin, freeing us to advance in Godliness. Because god’s Son died for us His forgiveness is infinite. We are called to live in God and draw sinners into God’s son.

There is no separation in God’s House. ‘No power in the sky above or in the earth below-indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord’ Romans 8.39 NLT.

Monday, March 15, 2010

There is only one form of limitation the New Testament Christian is meant to be living in. It is to be living one’s life in Jesus. To be a slave of Jesus the Son of God is to be bound in God. Here one is a son of God, an heir of God and one who wields the authority of God. To place oneself in Christ is the only way to be free and the only way to multiply unlimited life.

In the life of Adam, unlimited life is a contradiction. Adam’s destiny is death. The works of his hands are characterized by contradiction and depletion, as God said it would be. His most momentous works are a Babylon. But by living in Christ we are declared with power to be sons of God by the resurrection of our Lord (Romans 1.1-5).

Jesus not only opens the door of the grave. Life in Jesus is an Open Door. New Testament life is an open life lived in Jesus by the power of His resurrection. But to live in Adam and the laws of Moses or any kind of human regulation and expectation is to live in limitation and worse. As much as we try to perform we live under the control of our sinful nature. But by living in the Spirit, sin is put to death and life reigns (Romans 8.15).

Life by the Spirit of Life in Jesus is confident, positive, bold, imaginative colourful, and daring. It is all the things one bound in law and religion would consider rash – because one who lives in Jesus does not live out of doubt and fear. One who lives in the Spirit of God is a son of God and lives with a sense of sonship from the Spirit of Sonship who is the Father (Romans 8.15).

Characteristics of living in performance are as follows. One may expect to live in doubt, fear, confusion and envy. I mean a ‘tut-tutting’ envy of those who are free. The knowledge of good and evil has a culture. Here lack of imagination, absence of curiosity, resistance to openness and lack of discernment with its resulting rigidities are interpreted by the fearful and religious as evidence of authority to lead. They follow the dull! Simplistic statements made by spokespersons of limitation are interpreted by the bound as evidence of perception. But they are exactly the opposite. They are the remarks of blind leaders of the blind. In their orbit we can be safe but dead. But they that have the son of God have life!

In the book of Galatians we find the words, ‘But what does the Scripture say? "Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son’ Gal 4.30 NIV. Paul is talking here about life in the Spirit which is the life inherited by God’s sons.

The real children of Abraham are those who put their faith in God. That is, they put their faith in God and the life He has provided in Jesus. The slave woman mentioned here is of course Hagar, the mother of Ishmael. But there is also a figurative slave woman and her name is Eve. Eve when challenged by Satan chose to put her faith in herself. Adam and Eve unwittingly chose independence from God as a way to be like God. As a result they became alienated from His Presence. They experienced shame and guilt. They had chosen a ‘dead way.’ Separated from God they became divided within themselves and from them selves. Their life was now dichotomized. They began to live between the real and the ideal, the should and the should not. The knowledge of good and evil rose above them and began to rule over them. They became slaves to the letter. Projections of themselves and others rose above them to rule over them. They were the children of the slave woman.

Before the fall the sons of God lived in the authority of God. After the fall this authority moved to Satan. But after the cross and establishment of Jesus at Christ’s right hand the authority of God’s son has shifted again to the sons of God. That is, if they live in their inheritance. But Satan has done much to rob many of their inheritance of authority. He has persuaded many to live in a hybrid – a combination of Jesus and Moses where the law is not nailed to the cross. It is nailed by [sic] a false jesus to the believer. A false christ is hijacked as the means to keep the law. But this is not the real jesus. The real Jesus exists to transform us into sons.

Abraham started well. Unlike Eve he believed God and stepped into the unknown. But also like many christians Abraham went half way. He lapsed. He decided that God helps those who help themselves. In order to assist God to bring about God’s promise through himself, he acceded to Sarah’s scheme and conceived a son through Hagar. He lay with the slave woman. This may have been the custom then but let’s be clear. It was an attempt to achieve by carnal means what God meant to achieve in the Spirit. Paul’s teaching in Galatians is that those who live in performance live carnally while those who live in Jesus live in the Spirit. Let there be no mistake about this. To live in law is self-centeredness and carnality.

Paul uses the slave woman and her son as figures of those who live in the law. They cannot enjoy the victory or authority of sons over circumstances and the devil. Speaking of the law of Moses, Paul says that God had given this law as a school master in the context of the regime Adam had chosen – the knowledge of good and evil. Yet in this context it was the law that pointed to Christ because it illustrated the need for something better than the letter. This Better is a person who is righteousness Himself. Let’s be clear. When Jesus said that He was the way, the truth and the life, He meant that He is the complete righteousness of God. He is the personification of wholeness and holiness. He is the Word and the Means by which all things hang together. Things stay put instead of exploding into fragments because of laws. As such He is the law of the Spirit of life. But He is not the torah or some means of accomplishing Moses in man. Moses was of the earth. Jesus is the life of heaven in those of earth. As such, humans are sanctified and glorified in Him!

At times I hear people say, ‘Jesus transcends the law.’ Well of course He does. But Jesus is not some clever way of enabling us to keep the law of Moses. He is not a clever way of multiplying Moses to the max. Jesus is as different to set of rules as a programmer is different to a program he wrote. Jesus is the way for us to be complete as sons. Compared to Jesus, the Living Word, the torah is a valley of dead bones. Jesus is the only way that the flesh of God can be put on the bones of men so that they walk as the sons of God.

To transcend the law as Jesus does is not to live Moses’ law expertly and assiduously. It is to live in God as a son of God. Jesus is the righteousness of God in you, which is to say that He is the Son of God in you to make you a son. ‘The Word’ or ‘The law of the Spirit of life’ is infinitely more subtle and extensive than the torah ever could be. It is more life-giving than political correctness and religious conformity. The Spirit of Life embodies justice and mercy and it makes people whole. People who live in Christ no longer live in parts with their lives separated between the real and the ideal. They are a new creation producing a new creation in the earth.

The righteousness of God is a Person. Compared to the law of the spirit of life, the torah is a primitive skeleton that has power to hold man accountable, to condemn, blame and demand a sacrifice. But it has no power to make us whole or transform. Jesus is the means and the method. Transformation comes from Jesus alone. The degree to which this Person, this living Word is liberating is far greater than the extent to which the knowledge of good and evil is binding and limiting. The Word in you is infinite in power because it is full of resurrection life. So Paul writes, ‘The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do’ Hebrews 4.12,13 NASB.

‘The slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son.’ But rejoice! We are called out of darkness into light because we are called out of law, performance and expectation into Jesus to live in the inheritance of the free woman who is the Bride of Christ. The free woman lives in the Spirit of God and births the sons of God.

‘I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come’ Eph 1.18-21 NASB.

Thursday, March 11, 2010 pdf - Pastor Prince reports healings in the villages in the wake of Team efforts.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

What is the key to the rise and rise of the Kingdom of God? Christians can begin to operate in the gifts of the Spirit but then plateau and experience stalemate. A revival that began with the gifts of the Spirit can sputter and end in confusion. Or a fellowship that began in the gifts of the Spirit can attempt to work its way out of dormancy through good works. There’s a reason for this. Anything not sourced in the spirit of life originates in the knowledge of good and evil. The characteristics of this realm are division and entropy.

Non-believers have their systems of ethics, political correctness and performance criteria. Christians, who are not overt legalists, can live from performance in the life-commands of themselves and significant others. Here there is always a division between what is and what is not. Many christians while living the new testament age live the old testament culture. They live divided lives. Not a few believe that Jesus came so that we can keep the torah or Mosaic law. But if this is so Jesus’ Kingdom is divided against itself and worse. It is destined to fail. No. Jesus lived out of His Father. You have been redeemed to live out of Him.

We were made to live in God and placed in the Father as daughters and sons. We have been redeemed to the same status and purpose, which is to reign on behalf of the Father on the earth. Reigning in victory over circumstances stems from a life seated in the Father through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It is a life of authority and wholeness, even in adversity. It is a position of authority over the self, the Enemy and his works. We can live this way of we can live in religion, which is to live divided under the constraints of the knowledge of good and evil.

The dimensions of the knowledge of good and evil have one thing in common: Entropy. With entropy more life is being consumed than what is being generated. Things have an inbuilt fade factor. Every individual starts well, then simply fades away and dies. Empires reach their peak and collapse. Church strategies start well and inevitably fade out while those who propagate them burn out. Spiritual gifts manifest but the church life fizzles into confusion. Worse still, we operate in words of knowledge while knowing that our personal lives are broken and bleak. On the other hand, life in God’s Son, by the Spirit is a river of life. Here the yoke is easy and the burden light. This unlimited life starts when we begin to live in Jesus and is brought to completion at the consummation of all things in glory.

But much of it is available now, brought into the present by the Spirit of God, eternal life flows in through those who believe to irrigate the erratic and contradictory realm of the knowledge of good and evil. Inner lives are healed. Hearts are made whole. When Jesus’ life appears it appears as a sign and a prophetic declaration of the Kingdom of God ushering in the kingdom of good. This is what occurs when someone is healed by the hand of God or when a demon is cast out. It not only occurs by The Way. It advertises that there is a better Way – a way of living that starts and ends in Him.

We can continue our ministry in the realm of the knowledge of good and evil and appear to have made progress, but the reality is that nothing has really changed. We have merely momentarily altered the configuration or the ratio of evil to good in a particular situation. The Kingdom of God is not relative and neither does it fade. It is the life of God, the life of I AM. Only the life of God manifest in Kingdom seeds and yeasts of applied faith and boldness contains the power of the infinite. The spirit life of Jesus alone can multiply from glory to glory because only the life of the Spirit is without limit.

What began as The Renewal in the 1970s has the potential to expand from glory to glory – we live in the Spirit and not the letter if we transition from law to our true life in Jesus. Jesus Himself is both the fullness of God and the fullness of man. Jesus in you is the reality of glory – the spiritual life of a son.

The authority of sons is not spiritual gifts grafted on to an old testament life. The Kingdom of God is not the gifts of the Spirit based on a foundation of law in any of its forms. God is a Person. Good is God. Good is the Son of God in you. Good is I am whole in I AM. The Kingdom of God is sons living in the Son of God with authority. The Kingdom of God is life in the Spirit of Christ. It is Jesus as us. It is Christ expressed as His people who reign as priestly kings in the world. This is the path from glory to glory.

WEDNESDAY, March 10, 2010

Sons of God derive their identity from God’s Son. The most insidious thing about an identity derived from a religious culture is that such an identity can distort who God is and immunize us against God’s truth. This is particularly so in sects that regard themselves as ‘having the truth.’ People can and do emerge from such sects to begin a new life with Christ. However they frequently bring into their new life, concepts from the old through which they interpret things in their new life. Trapped in these assumptions they lived robbed, blocked by a glass ceiling that prevents them moving in levels of the Spirit that are open to those who live without limitation in the new and living way of Jesus.

The reason for this is that they have been brought up and acculturated in an identity driven theology. An identity driven theology seeks to maintain the identity of the group above all else because it is membership in this group that is held to provide security, certainty and salvation. Such notions exist, despite the fact that many of the prophets and Jesus warned people that being a child of Abraham would not suffice to gain entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven.

In an identity driven theology the Bible is interpreted through this ‘identity’ and its’ beliefs. As a result doctrine gets to be the word of a denomination rather than the Word of God.

So embedded is this ‘identity’ mind-set that God’s freedom and truth can be rejected or distorted. Why? Because the identity is the source of comfort, meaning and purpose. Identity has become ‘a little god’ and’ and the tail that wags the perception of Father God. God would have us interpret the Bible through the lens of His Spirit. But an identity driven theology is formed by interpreting the Bible through the lens of one’s identity in a profession, ethnic group or denomination. But God is His own mediator and the interpreter of His book. We were made to live in His Son and perceive in Him. We see light in His light. We interpret the Bible correctly to the extent that we live in Jesus.

If the Father wanted us to live this way, He could have said, ‘I made you to live in a box.’ But in fact He says that He has set before us an Open Door. This door is both limiting and infinite in possibility. Immersion in the Spirit of Christ immerses us in light and truth and protects us from error. Jesus Himself is the door that is closed to inaccuracy but open to endless opportunity. There are key differences on the resurrection side of the Open Door. Once Godly people lived in religion. In the new testament there is a new and living way: Jesus. In the old testament, the Godly lived in what God had provided for the children of Adam through Moses – a school master to lead to Christ. Since Jesus we live in the New Man who is Christ. In the old testament righteousness was expressed as things we must do and things we must not do. But not so in the new testament. Now righteousness is a Person – the Person of Jesus in you and more. The Person of Jesus as you.

We can have an identity as a worker or a son. The New and Living Way, The Way and The Door is always open. But it is you who have to walk through it. If you do your identity changes from slave to son; from cursed to blessed; from victim to over comer. In Adam you are overcome by the world. In Jesus you overcome the world. You become one who is favoured with the inheritance of a son because you have found your place where you belong. You are in God.

‘But what does the Scripture say? "Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son’ Galatians 4.30 NIV.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

It’s clear from Genesis and the life of Jesus that we are meant to receive our primary identity from God. The root of our being is our Father in Heaven and the description of who we are is sons/daughters of God. But this is not the way the world and many christians live. For many their primary identity is sourced in lesser gods such as ethnicity, nationality, a soccer team , a political party, a denomination or their vocation. For some their church, sect or denomination is their quasi political party. Its beliefs determine not only how they see themselves, how they see the world and how they react to the light that comes to set them free.

If our primary identity is in God’s Son, then we are free to realize our identity and purpose as we engage in things less than God like the creation. We impart His life and creativity to our worlds. Rooted in God’s Son we are not only a new creation but we give birth to the new creation. There is spiritual life in what we do. We produce freshness and diversity in the field of art, science, commerce and industry. Our parts are whole to the extent that we are find our wholeness from God and not from the parts. Many christians find their primary identity in their denomination and its beliefs. Even if such beliefs were correct in every detail, such an identity is incapable of birthing us as sons of the Father. Why? Such an identity is sourced in the knowledge of good and evil. To be a son we need an identity sourced in God’s Son.

Denominational ‘brand loyalty’ pushes some to imagine there are such things as Baptist Christians, Adventist Christians, Church of Christ Christians and more. But Paul speaks quite plainly on this. He says ‘Christ is not divided’ and James says, You can only serve one master.’ Identify yourself as of Apollos and you are not some of Jesus and some of Apollos. You are all Apollos. You are divided and by definition not the one new man in Christ. Sons are one and whole. Workers are divided, fragmented and driven.

Paul says. ‘You have one husband.’ Whether you know it or not, you give birth according to that which is your husband. Possess a divided identity and you birth insecurity, agitation, impurity and flesh. When Jesus says the pure in heart will see God and the poor in spirit will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, He is saying that those whose master is Jesus; those who eschew the supposed strength of adulterated unions with Jesus shall not only be the sons of God. They represent the Kingdom of God in spirit and truth. Being joined, whole and sons they possess authority – not as the scribes.

We can fail to advance into the things of God because we are more fond of our denominational identity than we are of our identity in Jesus. We can miss our inheritance in Christ because we read the new testament from denominational assumptions when we should be reading it from God and His purposes. Jesus said, ‘Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me’ Matt 10.38 NIV. Jesus then declares that although such a person may appear to be functioning normally in his day to day affairs, he has actually lost his real life as a son of God.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Many christians turn the new testament into the old testament and attempt to use Christ to do it. But such a christ is not the real Christ. Jesus lived out of His Father to be a Son. The Father’s plan is that Jesus is breathed into our hearts by the Spirit so that we can live as sons. Jesus not only lives in us. He becomes us. There is and was a remarkable difference between those who live from law and those who live in God. The latter live with authority and not as the scribes.

Man was created a prince but turned into a frog. Satan lied that the forbidden realm would liberate and elevate man. But it turned what had been the sons of the King into frogs. Princes became croakers and as Kermit says ‘it’s not easy being green.’ Moses’ law came from the hand of God. But it was framed for those who had chosen frogdom. The Ten Commandments were given in the context of the realm man had chosen - the knowledge of good and evil. The ten commandments were given to drive us to Christ.

I’ll say this again. To live out of a list of performance criteria always makes people less than they are. It makes them frogs. Some of them it makes good frogs but frogs nevertheless. Others it makes cane toads replete with bug eyes and poison sacks. But to live out of God makes us more than we are: Sons of God capable of infinite growth.

In the first century Jesus was called The Way because He is. He is the way we are made right with God, the way we are made Godly and the way we are made sons of God. He is the only we can be princes. The Father provided a righteousness from God; a righteousness that came from heaven, not from earth. A righteousness also known as the new and living way, the light, the truth and the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His Being: Jesus.

Frogs can exercise spiritual gifts – but not with the authority of sons. There has been an ad for a film on TV. We think it’s funny at our house because the beautiful princess kisses the ugly frog. But he doesn’t turn into a prince. She becomes a frog! This is exactly what happens to many christians when they kiss their jesus [sic] rather than Jesus the Son of God. I say they have their jesus because they have made him a moses/jesus. No, Jesus exists to replicate Himself in us – not to produce Moses in us. He draws us into Himself to create princes. We are meant to look into Jesus’ face, kiss Jesus and be transformed into His likeness as princes and princesses. But many are kissing their jesus, remaining frogs and perpetuating the kingdom of frogdom. Why do they do this? Because they believe Jesus exists to help them keep the ten commandments when in fact Jesus is here to make us like Himself!

Jesus lived out of His Father as a Son. He did not live out of the commandments. He kept the commandments because death is swallowed up in life – the life of the Father and the life of a son living in the Father. Truly moral people live out of Jesus, not out of morality. Sons of God live out of Jesus, not out of Moses. Paul’s enemies suspected that Jesus was replacing Moses because Jesus had. Moses pointed the way to Jesus. But Jesus does not point to Moses or exemplify him in any way. Jesus points to Himself and the Father. In the Spirit we have life.

The point is, has Jesus replaced Moses in your life? It’s either Jesus or Moses, frogdom or Kingdom, slaves or sons. It is the children of the free woman who receive the inheritance. What is the inheritance? To live with authority – not as the scribes. Who are the scribes? They are the promoters of law and letter.

Jesus did not come to earth, endure the cross, be crucified, raised from the dead and seated at the Father’s right hand to extend Adam and multiply frogs. He does not live to turn the church into the Egyptian frog plague. He lives to create sons by imparting Himself to our hearts. Those who live in the Spirit of God are the sons of God. Those who live in Jesus receive the Spirit without limit.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Adam and Eve were at peace in God and content in His fellowship. But Satan persuaded them to live in themselves and from the earth in an attempt to be like God. Born from the Spirit and created to reign over the earth, they now became subject to it – often becoming the victims and playthings of nature through disease and calamity. It is not chance today that as man increasingly seeks to live in various forms of independence and ignorance of the one true God that nature rebels and abuses man.

Despite our best intentions, living from the law we cannot meet our own expectations let alone God’s. We respond by struggling repeatedly to overcome. But circumstances harass us and sins mock us. Satan torments us so we attempt to hide what cannot be hidden behind a veneer of religious conformity. Eventually the hidden monster bursts into the open, runs amok and exposes us to an open shame – the blessing is that it forces us to confront the fact that we are slaves not sons and we need a different way. Live from the law and we live from the earth. We need a living way.

Authority to reign belongs to the sons of God. This was seen very early in Christ’s ministry when He both healed and forgave a paralysed man who had been lowered through a roof. Religion could not save him, just as it cannot save the earth today. The reason for the increasing chaos in the economic and political realms and the growing restiveness of nature in the present is the lack of recognition from christians and non-christians that Jesus is Lord of all. As one wit wrote, ‘If Jesus is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all.’

Satan succeeded in getting humans to attempt to elevate and transcend themselves through performance. God gave the Hebrews the law so that they would be accountable. But what started with a bang always ended with a whimper. Repeatedly the Hebrews promised much and delivered little. At Nehemiah’s instigation they repented of their repeated lapses into sin and rebellion and resolved to better. But they did not.

‘But despite all this, they were disobedient and rebelled against you. They turned their backs on your Law, they killed your prophets who warned them to return to you, and they committed terrible blasphemies. The people responded, "In view of all this, we are making a solemn promise and putting it in writing. On this sealed document are the names of our leaders and Levites and priests"’ Nehemiah 9.26,28 NLT.

Despite good intentions the proponents of law could not perform. History shows that they never did. Not until the Father sent a righteousness from God - His Son known as the New and Living Way who lives through those who believe in Him.

To define ourselves by law and by our performances is to define ourselves as less than we are. But to define ourselves as sons living in God’s Son is to open ourselves to infinite advance. Law is reductionist because a life lived in the knowledge of good and evil reduces. It shrinks and distorts making us less than we are. The knowledge of good and evil is reductionist. It is robbery. But Christ in you is God’s Way and God’s plan. It is the Father’s Way of advancing sons from glory to glory.

Many attempt to live from the self towards God. But the Father has remade us to live in His Son. Many attempt to live from themselves towards God. But we have been redeemed to live in God and become our true selves. Many attempt to live from the self towards God but only as the self is dead to self and alive to God can we live in the authority of God’s sons and not as the scribes.

‘For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory’ Col 1.27 NLT.

`

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Realizing how much the man understood, Jesus said to him, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God’ Mark 12.34 NLT.

The closest many of the institutionalised get to God is doing a whole lot of church stuff, which somehow they imagine is God. Eventually the emptiness of their busyness fuels a holy desperation to know God’s Son for Himself. But we need more than christianity to prevail and more than charismatic christianity to enjoy fatness in our soul and health in our spirit. We need to live in the Spirit, particularly in the Spirit of Sonship in order to exercise the authority of sons.

People, including christians, will adopt all kinds of rigour to avoid living in the Spirit. To the religious and, yes, carnal mind that has been conditioned by the earth, life in rules, morality and Moses seems more safe and certain that what appears as the windy and ephemeral life in the Spirit. Not only does a safely boxed life in law and prescription look more solid. It looks a lot safer than walking on water, which is what life in the Spirit is.

A life in rigour can look righteous. A life in the letter can seem more comprehensive and defined than a life lived in the Spirit of Christ. Life in the classifications and patterns of good and evil can appear righteous to the conservative and fearful soul. But there is a brand of ‘letter’ for the intellectual and liberal mind. Those who are not flagrant legalists but influenced by the spirit of Greece can settle for an intellectual life in the letter even while exercising some gifts of the Spirit. People who may not live out of the law of Moses may yet gravitate to living out of the philosophy and values of the New Testament. Or they may wax knowledgeable in the knowledge of the Bible or in spiritual gifts. But this is not a life in God’s Son. It is near the Kingdom but nor in it. They remain grounded in the seemingly safe terrain of the letter and an intellectual life because they live largely out of the spirit of Greece and are in great need of being swamped by a river of life from the Spirit of Christ.

Life in the Spirit is sourced from the heart and never the head. Life in the Spirit is not found in what is safe but in what is dangerous – a wholesale reliance on Christ in us and living as us. Christ as us is the life of a son. This is the Source of authority over the Enemy and his works.

Life in the Spirit is a walk on water that many eschew for the safer ground of a self imposed rigour. We may attempt to validate a life of dabbling in spiritual gifts plus a remnant of law by all kinds of religious works – attempting to be known as cutting edge, engaging in praise and worship, building networks, giving substantially to good causes and embarking on mission work. The human heart can turn to all kinds of rigorous pursuits in order to avoid the dangerous task of living unconditionally in Jesus by the Spirit. The death of self is required to be born again. Often this is death to a religious identity and a rebirth into an identity unconditionally derived from Christ.

What are the results of living in law-spirit hybrids? One is to live veiled. The power of God is veiled and our true individuality and priesthood in Christ are veiled. We live in good starts and inbuilt fade out. Another result is the presence of just enough spiritual gifts to dull us to the existence of real authority and power over the Enemy. Another result is limitation. All law, performance and letter involves limitation and restriction. The knowledge of good and evil is intrinsically defined and limited. It is dichotomized and polarized into ‘is and is not’ while life in the Spirit is unlimited and free. But life in God just is because it is lived out of I AM. The only limitation of a life in God is to live in God’s Son plus nothing. Here I am wholly absorbed in God so that I may prevail in the world.

The life of God is light with no darkness at all. It is a river of life flowing from God’s throne where the two are made one. Here all things are reconciled to Jesus. It is this life in the Spirit that we are called to step into. This is the life that existed before the fall and it is the door that Jesus opened at His installation at the right hand of the Father. We are called to live from heaven into earth and from Jesus into the world. The command of the Father is to live in His Son and the testimony of Jesus is that He is our life.

‘But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify’ Romans 3.21 NIV.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

This post is somewhat longer than usual. It comes as a result of observation and reflection. I believe its reception will determine whether we reign over circumstances or circumstances reign over us.

As we advance into the fullness of Christ we leave Adam behind. We disentangle ourselves from what Adam had done and submerge the self in what Jesus had done and is doing. We enter the life of God and emerge from the life of good and evil. To live in God is to live in Person as a person out of which flows the Presence of God. We become a person who is a son of God who represents the Father. We speak His words which are alive with His Life. The definition of good is no longer defined as words but as ‘being.’ Because we live, move and have our ‘being’ in God’s Son, we are the son’s of God. We are God’s sons because in Christ He has begotten us. We represent Him in person, word and deed. Our actions and speech are alive with Him. We are holy because He is holy and whole because He is whole.

Observation has shown me that some live in the Spirit and some do not. Some have a strong anointing and with others the anointing of the Spirit is dim, because although they can operate in spiritual gifts the ground of their being is ‘the letter.’ Only in the former can lives be changed and devils be made to flee. The ability to speak in the Spirit is more than a gift of the Spirit. It is a state of being. It is the life of God spoken through man and manifest through sons and not as the scribes – which is to say not as the practitioners of the letter. The ability to speak the Word and have God speak through us is recognised by those who have this anointing but often unnoticed by those who do not. Their eyes are veiled by the letter and the flesh. Here the normal mode is the letter, which originates in the knowledge of good and evil and restrains us in the realm of religion. Sometimes this good religion, but religion nevertheless. Only the Spirit gives life and only a son can multiply the power of God with the authority to prevail in the coming season.

The knowledge of good and evil is as subtle as it is pervasive. It is what all New Testament Christians should have left behind as they live as the new man rather than the old Adam. The knowledge of good and evil expressed as the letter is seen in teaching on what works and what does not. What consists of good formulas and bad policies and in the enumeration of good principles versus poor programs. This letter discourse is the stuff of many christian sermons and seminars and is often received with enthusiasm. It may be interesting, stimulating and an advance in knowledge, but it has one weakness. Since it is not delivered in the Spirit it cannot contain the life of God and cannot produce sons authorised to demolish the strongholds of principalities and power. It can facilitate workers, however but workers do not have authority – well not the authority of God. They may possess cardboard weapons that have no power over the Enemy. Sons have the ability to demolish strongholds and no weapon of hell can stand against them.

The application of these ‘letter’ principles produces limited results, but only in the letter. When we operate in the letter the more things change the more they remain the same. The key word here is limitation. ‘Letter’ discourse lacks the fullness and power of God because it comes from an inferior realm – the realm of law, letter and performance – the knowledge of good and evil. Its source is the realm Adam chose over life in God. On the other hand, principles enunciated out of a life in God’s son by the Spirit have a dynamism and power sourced in the Spirit and the Branch which is the tree of life. This is the realm where angels ascend and descend at the behest of the sons of God.

Life in Jesus is the means to a life in God. It is not a means of empowering the letter or giving legitimacy and strength to Moses and his laws. Life in Jesus in the Spirit multiplies God’s life on earth. But it does not multiply earth and the culture of the fall. To live in Jesus is to be a son and live in the Spirit as one with God. Life in Jesus is the way to live in God and have Him live in us, and more. It is the way to have Jesus live as us. Many Christians have come to the Holy Spirit by means of the letter and many can teach on the gifts of the Spirit by means of the letter. But to transition from religion to the Kingdom of God all must live in the Spirit and speak living words as sons of God.

Life in the letter means that our authority and discernment is veiled. We remain in limitation with limited authority because our sonship is bound and veiled by a veil over our hearts. We confine ourselves to a realm whose very nature is depletion. To live in the Spirit is distinct from possessing the gifts of the Spirit. There are people who operate in the gifts of the Spirit who live consistently in failure and defeat as a result of the fact that they still live in Adam and Moses. Dominion comes from living in Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Life in the Spirit is to live in the Son of God advancing from glory to glory.

If we wish to demolish strongholds and establish the kingdom we must impart the word and not the letter. When teaching about the Holy Spirit we need to graduate from the letter to the Spirit if we are to multiply the Kingdom. Unless we do this even the Renewal simply multiplies a slightly more updated version of religion. Jesus says quite plainly that people can operate in spiritual gifts without knowing Him. Life in the Spirit is not an old testament life with gifts of the Spirit added. Life in the Spirit is the new and living way. It is Jesus as you in the Spirit. It is a way that is alive with the presence because it is the Presence.

Read the Bible in the letter and what you get is not the Word but the letter. You get an enumeration of facts and principles. This is not entirely valueless as it testifies dimly of God. However it lacks the fullness of meaning that is available to one who lives in the spirit and reads the words of the Spirit in the Spirit. In this mode one reads the words of the Bible as the Word of God. Such words are alive, powerful and overflowing with the ability to reveal the righteousness and power of God to you and in you.

The letter is one of the modes of the knowledge of good and evil. It is often seen as the enumeration of things we should do or it can be a teaching expose of things that are right and true. This has some value but it has limited ability to impart God’s life because it is a description of the good. A talk on the same topic given by one who lives in the Spirit and is speaking in the Spirit is better than good. It is God. Such a talk will be God in you, speaking through you. Those who live in the Spirit recognize this and rejoice. Those who do not continues in sincerity but with the glory of God and His truth veiled.

Operating in the letter with the addition of spiritual gifts we can fiddle with the edges. But living in the Spirit we neutralize the strongman. We need to decide if we are among those who plunder the house of the strongman or merely make faces at him.

In anointed teaching the Word speaks through flesh and spreads among men. In the Spirit we multiply revelation. Lies are exposed and bondages broken. The ability to speak in the Spirit is more than an anointing. It is with authority. It is a life. It is Jesus. It is a life lived in Jesus, not in christianity. It is a life lived in God not in good. It is a life lived in humility not in self. It is a life lived from the heart not the head. Life in the Spirit is not a heart imbued with sentimentality. It is a heart joined to Jesus. It is Christ in you the reality of glory.

Fortunate are they who are humble enough to believe God. For they will live from heaven and reign in the earth. ‘God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth’ Matt 5.5 NLT.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

‘Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” The Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death” John 18.31 ESV.

Rather than accept Jesus for who He was, the scribes and Pharisees stuck firmly with the law. For these representatives of religion ‘the law’ was something that expressed the righteousness of God, the righteousness and status of themselves and their and superiority over others. The law for them ministered to the self-centeredness of fallen man. It represented what Adam had chosen over a life in God; a life in which holiness was upheld but never achieved. A life in which there must always be someone to blame and to scapegoat. The law written on stone conditioned the teachers of the law to stone adulterers while remaining ignorant of their own adultery. The words Jesus wrote on the sand revealed more than their hidden sin. They revealed that the law demanded the stoning of all who lived by law, including the teachers of the law.

When Jesus talked to these religious practitioners He spoke of ‘your law’ (John 10.34 and 18. 31) for it was their law in more ways than one. While God had written laws on stone and handed them to Moses on the mountain, the origins of this law were not heaven or God. These laws came from man and the earth. They originated with Adam’s decision to attempt to be like God through independence and self-centeredness. The laws of Moses were given in the context of the choice Adam had made. They were carnal. They were given in the context of the knowledge of good and evil and as such they demanded a sacrifice.

But man had been made to live in God. To live in anything less makes him less than Himself by limiting and fragmenting him. So God sent His Son from heaven, the righteousness from God as a new and living Way. He was the Way to be rejoined to God, and the living way to receive the imparted life of God. The way to be whole and holy is to be a son. God sent His Son. Not through the transference of positions, propositions and regulations would humans be restored to sonship, but through the miraculous impartation of the Person of Christ into our person or ‘being.’ Life in the Son makes us sons.

Many Christians live in legalism. But many more who do not live in religious legalism live in a deep seated performance mode sourced in the expectations of themselves and others. We discussed this yesterday. This drive is more deep seated than religious legalism because it is an embedded identity in which one is a worker and performer. In its’ christian form it means working and performing for Jesus.

The attempt to use Jesus to live the law of Moses is particularly subtle. It is a wide spread and well regarded form of legalism since it is legalism in Jesus name. Rather than Jesus being our good it is Jesus helping us do good. The latter is the difference between being a worker and a son; the difference between having great authority and having little; the difference between living in letter and living in the Spirit. The true life of God is life in God’s Son by the Spirit. God’s command is ‘live in my Son.’ Jesus’ testimony is ‘I am your life.’ When Jesus declared that He was the way, the truth and the life He was emphatically declaring that He was the righteousness of God in you and the Son of God making you a son. Jesus is the righteousness of God who becomes you! Jesus is the righteousness of God who becomes you! Jesus is the righteousness of God who becomes you!

We can live in our law or we can live in God’s law. Except that God’s law is a Person. There is no law extraneous to Christ. Jesus is both the law that holds the universe together and the law that both binds humans in love and gives them freedom to be themselves. He is the logos and the Spirit of Life.

‘The law of the Spirit of life’ is Jesus the life-giving Spirit, known also as The Righteousness from God, the New and Living Way and The Way. God is not a function of righteousness. Righteousness however is a function of God because it is the expression of Himself. Only by living in Jesus can you be yourself and a son with authority - unlike the scribes. Live in your law if you must but you are living in Adam rather than in Christ. You may go to heaven but will never represent the Kingdom of God in power on earth and you may well lose your soul.

‘But he continued, "You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world’ John 8.23 NIV.

Monday, March 1, 2010

There is more to our life in God that reading the Bible and doing church things. There is more indeed than operating in the gifts of the Spirit. This more is living in God by the Spirit of Christ.

To live in God’s Son by the Spirit is to be more human and more Godly than to live law or any kind of performance and expectation syndrome. To live in God by the Son of God is to be the new man/woman. It is to be a son and with authority – not as the scribes or as the teachers of law, religion and formulae.

To live in God and dislodge the power of the Enemy it is necessary to live in God by the Spirit of Christ. We need to have done with religion and divest ourselves of all the trappings and insidious acculturation of the knowledge of good and evil. Prayer and fasting are a great help. Worship and saturation in the Word are required. Fasting is good but a fasted life is better. We need to grow in living in Christ rather than in christianity and living in the Son of man rather than in ourselves. There is only one way to live in authority and not as the scribes. This is by living in Jesus instead of living in you.

Even though the disciples had healed some sick and cast out some devils they were unable to rid the boy of the demon that kept thrusting him into the fire. They did not have the authority. There are levels of authority that exceed that of operating in gifts like prophecy and word of knowledge. Such levels of authority belong to those who are sons rather than workers; who live in Jesus rather than laws and in the Spirit rather than in the expectations of man. When Jesus said, This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting, He was not only talking of fasting as a discipline. He meant a fasted life – a life in which instead of living in self and attempting to get to God we live in God and become who we truly are: Sons of God who represent the authority and power of God in the world.

The difference between those who live in the Son with the authority of Christ and those living in templates of performance will become more apparent as the battle between Christ and Satan unfolds. The power of Satan is increasing in the earth together with lying signs and wonders. It will take more than living in law with gifts added to unmask and nullify such shams. It will take the power that is in Christ and available to those who live in the Spirit of Life as sons to demolish these strongholds and raise the standard of Heaven in their place. We are more than conquerors if we live in Jesus rather than attempt to use Jesus to live out law and expectation. The latter are not conquerors at all. At the most they are bound. They are bound sons who live in limitation when they could have access to the Spirit without limit.

The Kingdom of Heaven on earth is the triumph of Christ through His brothers. Brothers who are His sons and His Bride. Brothers who live on this side of the cross without limitation. The Kingdom of God on earth is the end of the reign of confusion, bondage and pain and the dawn of new authority in God’s Son. Not new life in church but new life for the earth in Jesus. Life in which the sons of God drive out Satan and assume the dominion that is theirs in Christ.

Friday, February 26, 2010

On what basis are we marrying and living our marriages. Are we building the church or is Christ building His Church? Are we living our relationships out of God or out of the knowledge of good and evil? This post is about expectation as a form of performance orientation and law.

I returned from India on Wednesday night. Being more tired than I had realised I slept in until 10.00 AM the following day and woke up to a discussion on the ABC’s Life Matters. The issue was the fraught process of not only choosing the right partner but living with the one you chose. Quite a contrast to India, where most marriages are still arranged and yet last longer than many in the west, where the choice is supposedly based on love and romance. Could it be that in our country our choices are made more on self love and unrealistic expectations?

Expectations: The key word in the ABC program was expectations. The word expectation was on everyone’s lips. ‘Expectation’ had led many to compose lists of what they expected in a partner. Not surprisingly it was difficult to find a partner who met these expectations, let alone one who could maintain them in a marriage. The result reported by many was that when one partner failed to live up to the expectations of the other, the marriage was over.

It could be said that when we fall in love with someone who meets our expectations, the romantic love we experience, is to a large degree, self love. Have we fallen in love with the possibility of feeding our love of self. It’s interesting that those who seek the perfect marriage seldom find it. Just like those who seek perfect community in the perfect church. I don’t know about you, but I have observed that church folks who are always going on about community do not find it, while those with an unremitting focus on Jesus have it handed to them on a plate.

There’s a reason why many marriages and many house churches fail. Like those who attempt marriage based on expectations, those who attempt to build church community based on formulas and expectations have the same misfortune. They go from relationship to relationship never satisfied, never sated and experiencing constant separation and divorce. Or alternatively they accommodate themselves to a dysfunctional church community similar to a bad marriage. All of which brings me to the point: Separation and alienation are the essence of a life lived in the knowledge of good and evil. To live in this knowledge; to live in expectation is to be less than you were made to be and to make others less than they are. It is to live in abstractions when you could be living in personhood. It is to live in Adam when you have been gifted to live in Jesus. You were made to live as a person in the Person of God – a spiritual relationship that enables you to flower in individuality and in community – a spiritual relationship that is meant to enable marriage partners and the Body to live out of personhood instead of out of lists.

God so loves people that He sent His Son so that fullness of life can be experienced by living in Him. Such fullness is to be experienced in all relationship. A life in Jesus is a life in grace. Our failure to meet our personal expectations is covered in His love. The failure of others to meet our expectations is covered in His love (read His blood). So important is it that we live in God rather than in expectations, that God shed His blood to secure it. But it does not end there. Our union with God made possible by His blood transforms us. With Jesus living in us by the Spirit we become more loving, more human and more Godly. We become more able to be ourselves and to meet the needs of those around us. We get to be persons rather than list mongers. We create people rather than diminish them or abandon them. We live in a new and living way. Not the old way of performance and expectation. We live as sons in God’s Son. We are the Bride of Christ who multiplies the glory of persons. The definition of holiness and wholeness is not a list. He is Jesus the Person. Wholness in marriage and church community is Christ in you and with you.

‘Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness’ Eph 4.24 NIV.