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Wednesday, April, 14, 2010

There is a wave of neo legalism coming to the church. This will be seen as more vigorous dead works and the attempt to draw life from Jewish rites and ceremonies. But those who shine as the Son will be those who have an unrelenting focus on the Person of Jesus and His Presence in and among them. The glory of God in the world is Christ in you.

Those who have never advanced into the new and living way of Christ living through His people as the life-giving Spirit will be particularly vulnerable to this deception. Certain christian cultures live the old testament in the new testament age with sincerity. But they are misguided and as a result characterized by woodenness and the lack of God’s resurrection life as experienced in victory over sin, openness to opportunity and authority over the Enemy. They don’t operate in God’s authority so they make a thing of their own authority. They rely on cardboard weapons that pose no threat to the Enemy.

Paul says, ‘They don’t understand God’s way. They are trapped in misdirected zeal. They cling to their own way of getting right with God by keeping the law (Romans 10.3). The law, while precious to the religious mind is a prison of self-centeredness and self inflation. Paul says, ‘All who are under the law are under a curse’ because they are. While it is true that through ignorance or rebellion we can live in the law under grace, it is also true that we will not experience God’s favour. The absence of favour is called curse.

Many christians are very much absorbed in self-effort and the attempt to bring Christ down to them through program and activity. Large churches frequently function on the engine of self effort, the letter and its methods. These works are dead but are given the appearance of life by frenetic activity.

Jesus desires faith in Him, not faith in faith or faith in self-effort. We need to abandon the notion that God helps those who help themselves. He helps those who believe that Jesus is Lord. It is by believing in our hearts and confessing with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and practicing that He is all and in all that we received God’s life and bring His saving power to the lost’ Romans 10.8.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

A person who is theologically uneducated and living out of God’s Son is better off than one who is literate and living out of the knowledge of good and evil. The latter can multiply the knowledge of good and evil in the illusion that they are multiplying the knowledge of God. But the knowledge of God can only multiplied in spirit and in truth by those who live in God’s Son by the Spirit. To live in the Spirit we must live in Jesus not Moses.

While living in this mode may sound right it is not a life lived in spirit or in truth.

How is it that so many can live from the knowledge of good and evil when we have Jesus to live in? The first reason is that Satan is a robber. The second is that since living from good and evil is the default position of fallen man, many of God’s people attempt to ultilise Jesus to live in the realm of good and evil. They attempt to use Jesus to assist them to live a Godly life in a realm that is cursed and over which Satan holds the legal rights.

But Jesus is the Way for us to live in God as we did before the fall.

To live in the Spirit is to live in The Presence. The Presence is Jesus who is the sum of wisdom and understanding. Those who multiply the Kingdom of Heaven live in Him and through Him. They reign in life in Him.

Many of God’s people are steeped in the knowledge of good and evil. These dichotomies are so embedded in them that the knowledge of good and evil is the hermeneutic (perspective) with which they interpret the entire Bible. They have the old testament in the old testament and the old testament in the new testament.

The result is that the Bible is multiplied as the letter rather than the Word – which is the reason why so many who are schooled in the Bible are living exponents of conflict and confusion. Even when ‘confusion’ is not the most obvious symptom of the presence of the forbidden tree there are other symptoms of its presence such as tedium in teaching and lack of power in the challenges of life. A talk delivered in the letter can alter the ratio of good and evil by altering a perspective on a topic – but it cannot multiply the life of God.

Good and evil are not an illusion. But only those who live in Jesus will discern it as it is and be used of God to overcome it with light and life. The scribes and Pharisees called evil good and good evil, even though they were the custodians of the deposit God had given to the Jews. In putting Jesus to death they fell into the hands of God. They fulfilled His plan to end the era of Adam and birth the era of the sons of God who live as new men and women in Christ. But they themselves remained in darkness. To see what God defines as evil and what He describes as good is to have discernment. ‘Discernment’ is quite a different way of seeing to the seeing of those who live out of religion, law and letter. To live in revelation is to live in God and His light.

‘In him was life, and that life was the light of men’ John 1.4 NIV.

‘Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, "I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won't have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life’ John 8.12 NLT.

‘While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world’ John 9.5 NASB.

When we are in Jesus and He in us we will see in His light and be lights in the world.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Jesus did not become the ‘one new man.’ He was always one. ‘Oneness’ or union with God and oneness with Himself was His nature. This was the salvation He was achieving for His brothers. Jesus was always the one new man because He and His Father were one. Jesus was not divided like we who are born in sin. Jesus was whole. All He had to do to be holy was to be Himself. Born form God, living in the Father and overflowing with the Holy Spirit, He did not have to ask Himself, ‘What would Jesus do?’ or even ‘What would the Father do? Jesus did what the Father was doing because He was the Father’s son. Jesus was holy simply by being Himself.

‘I Am’ is God. We need to understand that ‘I am’ is the sense of being daughters and sons is the true nature of ourselves. Living in God I am always advancing into who God made me to be. But living in the assumptions of the world with its thought patterns sourced in demons, I am separated from God and divided in my inner being. The basic principles of the world come from the knowledge of good and evil.

‘See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ’ Col 2.8 NIV.

There is much about the completeness of Jesus in Paul’s writings. The essence of his message is ‘Christ in you is the righteousness of God in you which is the hope and the reality of glory.’ Yet in the vision, ‘The Torch and the Sword’ Jesus remarks that many people see Paul’s letters as the premier writings, when the fact is that the premier writings are those that tell the story of Jesus and His doings in streets and villages. For example Paul reveals the glory of God In Christ in Colossians 1.15-20. But the greater glory is Christ living through His people today!

A moment’s reflection reveals that Paul’s writings, as good as they are and as inspired as they are, are so to speak, more theological, a fact which appeals to our religious mind. The truth is however that God’s holiness is a life lived. Jesus in His Person and His life is the exact image of the Father; the living representative of a son who lives in humility, obedience and authority – and with power. Not as those who live in the knowledge of good and evil, without discernment and without authority.

Paul talks of the conflicted man or woman who lives a divided life in the knowledge of good and evil. We find ourselves not doing what we know we should be doing and being ashamed of what we did. Leanne Payne writes tellingly on the dilemma of this fallen state where the ideals, the projections of our ideal self and religious abstractions walk beside us and tyrannize us in the manner described by Paul. Paul calls this our body of death because this is the death we live when we live in the conflicted realm of the knowledge of good and evil. This realm is innately divided and divides all who live in it between the should and should not.

‘Who shall deliver us from the this body of death?

Jesus delivers us from our bodies of death because He is whole, one with the Father and one with man. ‘Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord’ Romans 7.25. By joining us to Himself, He has joined us to His wholeness and holiness. ‘But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation Col 1.22 NIV. By joining us to God, Jesus joins us to ourselves uniting our inner being.

Through Jesus the Father re-creates us individually and collectively as ‘one new man.’ As we invite Jesus to live in us and step into His life our ‘being’ experiences increasing healing as we experience the union with God and self that is our inheritance as daughters and sons of God. The more that we live in Jesus the more we please God, bring satisfaction to ourselves and replenish the world – simply by being ourselves!

Rivers of living water cannot flow from the inner being of those who live out of things different to the Life of the one new man. But freshness and victory over circumstances flow in streams from those who live as sons in Jesus.

‘By abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace’ Eph 2.15 NIV.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

We were made to live in God and reign over the stuff. So why is it that having assented to the truth of this statement we continue our obsession with the ‘christian stuff’ and attempt to add Jesus to it or ask Him to bless it? Have you ever been at a fellowship where they set up for twenty five minutes and pray for five? Or where they concentrate so hard on doing praise and worship that Jesus is a bystander? There are situations where one has to hack one’s way through the undergrowth of people ‘doing community’ before one can get to the Jesus with which we are meant to commune. Why is it that in overseas places Christ’s miracles flow so freely? Could it be that in places like India people are so desperate for Jesus that they are not distracted by ‘the stuff’ and they zero in on the Christ? Could it be that life is so spare that people do not have the 'luxury' of making faith out of the 'stuf?'

Whatever happened to ‘And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself’ Eph 4.10 NLT? Isn't Jesus meant to fill you, the room you are in, the office, the church , the town and the universe?

Being a puritan wont make anyone a son of God, but living in God’s son will. We have reached a season where the possibility and the actuality of being one with God’s Son have come together as we advance into life in the Spirit. Surrounded by wickedness and gloom those who settle for living in Jesus will not only do ‘greater works.’ As they live move and have their essence in Jesus they will live in unparalled measures of liberty, peace, joy and fruitfulness. The nature of this advance into the fullness of Jesus and the glory of sons, is surveyed in this article by Ron McGatlin (pdf).

Friday, April 9, 2010

Aslan has returned. He’s been here for some time, turning up where not expected and often unrecognized for who He is. ‘He’s not a tame lion you know.’ Neither is He orthodox. He doesn’t fit into boxes people make for Him. He’s made in His own image and likeness – which is frequently annoying and frustrating for those who have made a god in their own image and called it ‘my religion’ or ‘christianity. He’s not a piece made to fit into our puzzle. He creates puzzles and delights in seeing if we will recognize Him.

Many who seek His face do perceive that He is among us. But those preoccupied with His hands or feet often do not. The former have come to understand something of His heart and His nature, while those preoccupied with the activities of religion – which are frequently restrictive and life-denying - imagine Him to be such a one as themselves.

When Jesus came into the world as the Lamb of God to take away sin and baptize all with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit He was recognised by some. The few that recognised Jesus as the Messiah and the Sent One of God had been seeking Him. Those drawn to His light were few but they were enough to change the world. The same is true today.

The Toronto Blessing was from God. This doesn’t mean that everything people did was of God but it does mean there was a visitation from God. One of the main things God was saying, I believe was, ‘You are too serious. I am not as religious as you think!’

I was talking to a friend the other day about the book, The Shack. It’s interesting how many non-believers will read The Shack, while avoiding christian churches like the plague. Clearly they are discerning enough to know that there is a difference between God and what often poses as His church, and that God is not the caricature that many of His followers have made Him out to be. We both shared how God had spoken to us through this book and I offered that I believe a lot of what God wants to say to us in this season is in this book. Yet christians oppose it. I believe it can be opposed by sincere people schooled in the disfigurement of religion and evil people who are filled with the spirit of anti-christ.

Movements, revivals and books are signs from God. A book like The Shack is a spiritual thermometer. The comfort or discomfort we feel as we read such a book is a pretty accurate indication of the extent to which we are living out of God or living out of religion. That’s the choice Satan presented to Eve. Religion fills us with fear and makes us less than we are. But a life in God through the Person of Jesus makes us more than we could ever hope to be.

‘Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think’ Eph 3.20 NLT.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Many good people do not know that worshiping in the Presence of God is not a synonym for worshipping in the presence of themselves. Busyness and church programs are equated by many with God. I thought that myself once before He encountered me in a Spirit-filled Baptist church. This changed my life. It changed me from being one who had attempted to fill His absence with myself and the things I did at church and for church to one who is addicted to His Presence and intolerant of spaces that are merely the habitations of religion and humanism dressed up as god.

“The Presence” is of course Jesus who is present by the Spirit when He is desired and worshiped for who He is. If Jesus is not Lord of all He is not Lord at all which He is not for many christians who accord Him a parsimonious segment of limited time at the weekend and think that this is worship. Genuine worship is a life and a life that is not our own but nevertheless a life that is filled and made joyful as we are filled with the Presence of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus has not turned up because we have. But then you would not know that if you had been steeped in a culture of His absence and never entered a space where His Presence is palpable and evident in ways that were normal when Jesus was on earth. His Presence once encountered is addictive and meant to be. Because unless we eat Him we have no real life.

There are also those, who in their thousands, do not know that we are not meant to live out of morality, good works, church lore and the expectation of ourselves and others. That’s right. We are not meant to live out of any of these. We were made to live in God, remade to live from the Son of God and reborn to live as God’s sons in righteousness and wholeness. All of this is the work of God – of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit – working to make us holy: A righteousness from God.

Quite plainly the Lord teaches in the book of Romans that all this stuff, this goodness and piety doesn’t wash, doesn’t wash us and make us whole. Sin in us actually uses these things to evoke disobedience and rebellion in our bodies. So what does The Father do? He gets Jesus to rejoin us to Himself. Jesus enters our being in the Spirit and makes new men and women out of us. Our nature changes and our antipathy to God and His ways evaporates. Now with the Spirit of God in us we come to abhor what is bad and crave what is good.

‘When we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him’ Roman 6.4-7 NLT.

‘But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all’ Romans 8.9 NLT.

‘Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago’ Ephesians 2. 9 -10.

Wednesday, April 6, 2010

Truth expressed in a few words in the Spirit can be tediously expressed in the letter. Truth expressed in the Spirit expands while precepts of the letter fade and fall to the ground from whence they came. Truth comes from heaven and empowers those who live on earth. This truth is The Word. The ‘word’ of God is always alive, exquisitely appropriate and powerful.

‘You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world’ John 8.23 NIV.

The word of God is not the ‘letter of God.’ The Word is alive with God’s Presence because it is filled with Him. The word of God when manifest through the Spirit is light. Truth expressed in the Spirit is life. It expresses the real nature of things with freshness and comes charged with the dynamism of God. Truth expressed in the Spirit is revelation from God.

The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ Hebrews 4.12. This scripture is usually applied to the Bible as the word of God, but it points to a Word that is deeper and more fundamental than the Bible. This is the ‘Word’ to which the scriptures testify. It points to the Word who was in the beginning and who was manifest as Light in the world.

If this light lives in you, you will teach in the Spirit and rivers of living water will flow from your teaching. But if you are grounded in the knowledge of good and evil or living out the old testament in the new testament age, you will disseminate the letter. As correct as your discourse might be, you will release a river of sand. To multiply light and life we must live in God’s Son.

The ability to operate in spiritual gifts is not proof that we are living in the Spirit or that we represent God. Carnal, immature and defeated people can operate in spiritual gifts – in a limited way. The ways of the old covenant are characterised by limitation, even in the field of spiritual gifts. But should our being be grounded in Jesus we have the Spirit without limit.

Strength of character and the light of God, with authority, flows from those who live in the Spirit of Christ with their humanity grounded in His Person. There is a level of light, light and authority that flows from those who know God, who are known by Him and live in Him that is unsurpassed. It wells up from glory to glory because it is sourced is the fullness of Christ.

Paul describes this fullness below.

‘For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us’ Eph 3.14-20 NASB.

Tuesday, April 5, 2010

We can be who God made us to be or we can express the identity the Enemy intends for us. Jesus has redeemed us from slaves to sons. As sons we express the identity and purpose for which we were created. Satan cannot rob God’s people of eternal life. But he is frequently successful in robbing us of our real identity and purpose in God’s Kingdom.

Paradoxically the extent to which we are who Jesus redeemed us to be is the extent to which we are dead to ourselves. Dead to our carnal selves that is. The degree to which we are dead to self and alive to Jesus is the extent to which we will be able to live out our heart purposes in their fullness. To do this is to live in God’s Son and thereby to live in God’s glory.

Some years ago I listened to a tale about a sneaky boy. God found this boy and let him know that He intended to use this sneaky quality in ways that would advance His kingdom. None of these new ways would be dishonest. But in Jesus they would be new and living ways of advancing Christ’s cause in subtlety and cleverness in the power of the Spirit.

Jesus was who He was. As ‘I AM’ He lived out His identity in complete harmony with His Father’s wishes and in absolute fulfillment of His own destiny. As a Son Jesus lived in His Father. He was not beholden to the status quo. He lived in the Holy Spirit, not the political spirit. He spoke with clarity and authority and not as the scribes. His message was ‘God has made a change and I am it!’

But the aficionados of law and letter did not like it. They found it easier to label Jesus as a rebel rather than change themselves and confront their own rebellion. Jesus lived out of God and not out of consideration of the knowledge of good and evil. He was dismissive of these attachments to theological positions with their vested interests. Jesus was His Father’s Son. Not a denomination’s son. He was the Rock hewn from the Rock that was greater than He – not a stone in someone else’s doctrinal edifice. Jesus was grace and truth. Not grace and compromise. Not grace and the subtle minimization of any thing that was different to what had always believed and what had always been done. As such, Jesus bound captivity and released a warrior race of priest-kings who excel in the vigour of God and the multiplication of freedom. At the hand of such people Satan falls like lightning!

When we declare ourselves to be living in the fullness of Christ and enter into Him, we receive our identity and authority over the Enemy and all his works. Jesus says,

‘I say to you that you are Peter (which means 'rock'), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it’ Matt 16.18 NLT.

Jesus empowers those who live unconditionally in Him to be themselves so that many sons are brought to glory. What is the glory of the sons and daughters of God? It is to live as the persons Jesus has redeemed us to be and complete His work.

‘After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: "Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you’ John 17.1 NIV.

‘I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do’

John 17.4 NIV.

MONDAY, April 5, 2010

I remarked to a friend that I would not be going to a convention this year. She replied, ‘There will be some really good speakers you know.” Quite frankly I’m over the magnet of the ‘good speaker.’ And I’m not attracted to the honey-pot of the latest personality who has ‘started a church.’ Well not unless the speaker lives in God’s Son and acts as a living door for the Presence of God to pass through and release His supernatural life. I’m not attracted to the latest church plant - not unless the church planter has been appointed by God as one who plants His Presence and power. How many more leafy trees without fruit do we need? For every one who plants Jesus in authority and power there are thirty one who simply plant a new version of church.

So what are you doing person of God? Are you planting new version of the forms of godliness without power or do you multiply into the distracted world all that Jesus began with divine force that topples strongholds of evil.

Jesus spent a lot of His time outside the synagogue, which is not surprising, since He was the Presence. Here was I AM releasing identity, healing and forgiveness to the broken wherever He happened to be – which reminds me of a friend of mine who healed a sick man in the beachside toilet – not a very religious place but a place that saw the glory of God!

When Jesus said ‘the kingdom of God is among you’ He did not mean that the Kingdom of God was restricted to the church or that it was the church. The Kingdom of God is the multiplication of the Christ who is in you into our worlds – whether this be the local gents, laundry, super market, car wash or hair dressing salon. That is if Christ is in us in the first place. What actually is in you friend? The might of Christ or a mish-mash of the stuff that’s come to be known as ‘church.’

I’ve just returned from India where in one location the Lord healed roughly 9 out of ten persons we prayed for. I preached to people, many of whom were Hindu’s, who came along to the meetings expecting to be healed. My belief is that the Lord wants to do the same thing in the neighborhoods and cities of Australia – if He can find enough of His people who do not have a faith made out of unbelief.

I want to multiply what Jesus began and I want to see here what we saw in India – the sick healed and demons cast out. I’ve been reading a book by Kevin Dedmon called Treasure Hunt. He teaches people how to receive words of knowledge, go to places where people gather, find the people and the illnesses the Lord has revealed and heal the sick. The cute thing about all this is that the Lord sends His servants to people in whom a door in the heart or in their circumstance is already open and waiting for a messenger of the Lord to come by.

We tried this out at Victoria Markets last Sunday. It was not a raging success. I frequently get words of knowledge in ministry but not this time. The pictures I got were confused and when I saw a lady that might fit what I thought I had seen, she did not fit all the criteria. Despite this I did not feel we had failed. We had begun by taking a risk.

We intend to grow in this by growing in faith, skill and in Christ’s works of divine power. I’ll let you know. If you have great boldness and wish to out do us in Christ’s miraculous kindness, get the book and just put it into practice and let me know the mighty exciting things the Lord has done through you.

Saturday, April 2, 2010

The message of Easter is death to the old life and the birth of a new. Why is it important to live God’s life in Jesus? Why is it critical to live in Jesus rather than in christianity? Why is it vital to live in Jesus instead of any kind of law like the ten commandments, morality or performance. Because unless we live in God through Jesus we are live under the curse of knowledge of good and evil. We must live in God to represent the Kingdom of God.

When Satan seduced Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, his temptation did not present as rebellion. It came in the guise of a spirituality; a form of religion there for those who might take the risk of stepping out independently of God. The knowledge of good and evil has many variations today. But whether acknowledged or not their basis is always ‘religious’ because they are a mode of godliness whereby men may be as gods, by living at variance with the provision of God.

This Easter Friday I happened to hear professor Peter Singer suggesting that all of us in Western Countries commit some of our monetary largesse to alleviating poverty. Peter Singer may be a good person, but he is not a God person. His field is applied philosophy and public ethics. He is an atheist and well known representative of the knowledge of good and evil. He is in a sense a humanist high priest able to draw on his considerable intelligence and knowledge to make pronouncements on what he believes people ought to do.

I do not disagree with his contention that we should give to the poor. What I do say is that (a) Giving to the poor and assisting those devastated by disaster changes the ratio of good and evil. (b) However this does not automatically build the Kingdom of God. (c) The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of good under the reign of Jesus Christ the King.

I’ll say it again. The Kingdom of God is the domain of Jesus the King. His Kingdom is characterised by a flow of energy or life that is also His Person. He is God. He is good and He is life. This life is spiritual. That is, it is ‘presence’ and spirit that flows from Jesus Christ into people and through people. Jesus rejoins fatherless people to God and reverses the power of death that is in their lives through living in the knowledge of good and evil. Jesus creates His Kingdom of life by rejoining people to the Father and aligning them with the laws of nature and the universe. He dissipates lawlessness and multiplies the spirit of life. Jesus creates connection and oneness. But other forms of connection and ‘one world’ ideals based on the knowledge of good and evil create confusion, oppression, violence and death – even in the sophisticated modes promoted by professor Singer.

We were made to live in God and the world was made to flourish in God. This is clearly relevant to our attempts to build the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of god is Christ in you, intimately and in the power of the Spirit. Christianity in itself is not the Kingdom of God and neither is a self-obsessed church. Only that which lives in God’s Son is His Kingdom. A christian moral life is not necessarily the Kingdom of God and neither is absorption in christian well doing. All of these, when not an outflow of Jesus in the world, are variations of the knowledge of good and evil. They have a religious flavour but are not His Kingdom. They come under the authority of the one who inaugurated them.

We may think our adherence to law is spiritual but this belief has quite another source. Could it be that we are living in subtle rebellion by living in an old way, given the fact that the Father has given a new and living way? We can either repeat the sin of Eve or do it God’s way. The knowledge of good and evil does not produce life. It certifies death. You and all you touch will surely die, even it starts with a bang.

The Father gave Moses laws in the context of the knowledge of good and evil because this is the realm Adam had chosen. God honours human choice. But the Father had planted His secret plan in these Jewish laws and ceremonies. They were a school master to point to Jesus and a shadow of what was to come. This is the reality we are commanded to live in now – the privilege of once again being sons of God who live in God’s Son.

So dear reader, do you intend to live in you, or live in God? Are you still living in shadows when the reality is Christ? Unless we live in Jesus as the new man to multiply Jesus life in the world, we remain in the knowledge of good and evil and are no better off than Professor Singer. We may alter the ratio of good and evil in the world but what we have done is not the Kingdom of God’s Son. It is a kingdom that belongs to another.

All that Jesus represents is alive, fresh and new. Not so the old covenant with its inbuilt depletion. His presence in you overflows with healing and restoration. His Presence continually replenishes with fresh light. It never fades but increases exponentially because it is life in itself. It is not just life. It is supernatural life. It is the life of God through you multiplied into the world, often in refreshment and frequently with the signs and wonders of God.

"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water Jer 2.13 NIV.

‘For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants’ Isa 44.3 NIV.

‘Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, 'Rivers of living water will flow from his heart’ John 7.38 NLT.

Friday, April 2, 2010

There’s a lot of abortion these days – tiny lives terminated before they taste life. Identities and destinies cut short before they can flower into manhood and womanhood. How Satan must rejoice. He specializes in abortion. Early on he was successful in aborting God’s plan for the sons of God to be like God. In deluding Eve into independence and alienation from God he succeeded in making us less than we were. He aborted Godliness in man by getting them to exchange the honour and dignity they had in God for an attempted righteousness from man.

Satan’s robbery is a kind of abortion. He’s been very successful in robbing those bound for heaven with God’s eternal life in the present. But he was not successful with Mary. Mary chose to believe God. She chose to accept the bizarre prospect of the Holy Spirit coming upon her and became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. She bore the Son of God in her womb and in a very literal way gave birth to the Kingdom of God. Mary, an old testament person held the new testament in her womb. She had infinity within. She continued to term, despite wagging tongues and disapproving heads. By obeying the Spirit and being one with the Spirit she fulfilled the purpose of God and birthed the New Creation.

It’s quite clear from John 1.1 that God had begun the earth again. He so loved the world that He released a new Genesis in Christ. Just as the Spirit had moved on the face of the deep, so the Spirit of God moved on Mary and she birthed Someone more ‘deep’ than she could have imagined. Living in humility, obedience and faith Mary literally was part of the birth pangs that heralded the new creation which is the Kingdom of God.

Did Mary ever think of aborting the seed of Kingdom life within her? We do not know. Whatever thoughts that passed through her mind she persisted in obedience to the Father and bore fruit to the Spirit of God. It is the Spirit and not the flesh that builds the Kingdom of God.

There’s risk in a life in the Spirit. To live in the Spirit is to walk by faith to the degree that we walk on water. The book of Galatians makes it clear that we either walk in the Spirit or we strive in the law. We cannot live in both. Here a life in the Spirit is defined as complete union with Christ to the extent that He grows in us and takes over our lives. ‘I’m dead to self, but alive to God because Jesus lives in me by the Spirit.’

Jesus said that any one who lives in the Spirit is far greater than John the Baptist. Why? Because such a person advances into the fullness of Jesus, their carnal man decreasing and his spirit man increasing, so that every minute they are alive they increase in the holiness and authority of a son of God. These are the kinds of people who stamp on Satan’s head. They have authority to tear down strongholds of evil because God is in them.

But this is too much for the man and woman of the earth. Marinated in the knowledge of good and evil and cowed by law, it seems a great risk change to a life in God from mere knowledge about God. So having begun the spirit they transfer to the letter and attempt to live the Kingdom of God by walking dilegently on the earth. Their life in the Spirit is aborted and the extent of their authority diminished in comparison to what it could have been had they chosen to find their identity in Christ and receive the Spirit without limit.

Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians because people had aborted life in the Spirit to return to a life lived from religion. People can do this because they have been steeped in a religion of the letter from birth and are bound to this identity or maybe because they believe the journey from where they are to where God wants them to be is too much. They refuse to budge, adopt a closed mind and give themselves over to good works.

But let’s be clear. When we refuse God’s invitation to live in the Spirit and insist on living out of categories of good and evil, we dull ourselves, limit God’s authority in us and short change His Kingdom. Living energetically from the earth we rob God and rob ourselves and live in the delusion that we are living in God’s will. No we are not. We persuade ourselves that we are doing good when we have actually cut ourselves off from God’s best and the power that comes from the power of an indestructible life.

Consciously or unconsciously we make decisions that limit ourselves and the Kingdom of God. Our choices position us to participate in the unlimited expansion that comes from His fullness or place us in the restricted realm of limitation and decay. Anything sourced in law, letter and performance is intrinsically bound. But to live a spiritual life sourced in the Spirit of God is to be joined to the realm of infinity. Those who live in God’s Son are sent by God’s Son in order to replicate His life without limit.

‘He is sent by God. He speaks God's words, for God gives him the Spirit without limit’ John 3.34 NLT.

Several years ago I had a dream in which the Lord showed me what it was like to live and walk in the Spirit. About five meters out from a very high cliff, hovering in space, was a small patch of earth and rock on which we were intended to stand. Standing on this bit of earth hovering in space, one had the apprehension of death – since it defied all natural laws. But the reality was that this precarious position was life in the fullness of Christ. It was a patch of life and authority.

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.

Tuesday, March 10, 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.
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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.

He said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you. “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven” Luke 10.18 NASB. Rejoice not only because you have done these deeds but exult because your authority to do them comes from the fact that you are indeed the sons of the Most High God whose authority you represent

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.

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.

THURSDAY, February 4, 2010

Recently I changed my religious views info on my Face Book page from charismatic to ‘living in the Lordship of Jesus.’ I wanted it to be more like what a friend had written which is ‘Jesus is Lord.’ I realized also that putting charismatic in that space could give the impression that I was attempting to live out of being a charismatic. I have nothing against charismatics. I have simply seen that charismatics can live out of ‘religion’ like anyone else. The Father has provided that we live out of His Son.

If you are one who follows what I write you would know that I would not want anyone to think that we can live out of religion and be whole, let alone walk in the authority of the sons of God. I attempt to live in God’s Son Jesus and encourage others to do so because we were made to live in God by the Spirit. That’s what ‘sons’ do. Charismatic churches can be joyous. But they can also be amazingly stuck in the forms of joy without having the joy itself. And sometimes preoccupied with the things of the Spirit but lacking His Real Presence.

I don’t say this to be unkind. I spent most of my life in the an evangelical culture until I found that there were gatherings and communities of people who experienced the Presence of God in their assemblies and personal lives. I mean not as a concept but as a reality. Once you have been where God is you can quickly tell where He isn’t. The Presence of God is addictive. It is meant to be because it is the only addiction that brings life.

If that is not your experience, I urge you to seek it. But we don’t have to be charismatics to experience God. We simply have to live in His Son by the Spirit. Living in religion we can neither know God or know ourselves. This is why many churches are places of politics rather than the House of God. To live out of church is to rob God and each other. Tp live in God and know His Son is to release rivers of living water.

Living in God is not a church pattern or set of cultural behaviours. We are refreshed, emboldened and precipitated into who we are as sons when the Presence that comes is God – not by having gotten ourselves into a trance by singing songs that are mainly about us!

We do, however, have to be worshipers of Jesus, who worship from the heart rather than attempting it from the head. Living in God is a life made possible because the Father loved the world; because Jesus re-joined us to the Family of God and because the Spirit of Christ will live with us and in us. We just have to live in what Jesus has done. In the Spirit we are able to transcend what we are by advancing into the fullness of Christ. The Father’s stupendous plan in which the whole God-Head has conspired is Christ in you and more. It is Christ as you as your spirit is ignited with the Holy Spirit of God. It’s more important to be a son than conformed to the world, even a culture of the religious world.

The church has been weak because so many of us have been living out of christianity, which boils down to living out of church. When we live out of Jesus the Son, as sons, the church will be mighty and the Kingdom of God will be real because a race of kingly priests will be at large in neighborhoods, towns and cities. Authority looks like what Jesus did. This is the authority that cast out demons and healed sick people applied to the inner life, to families, to industrial relations and commercial production.

The Kingdom of God can never be the result of law, performance and the expectation of ourselves and the various authorities. The righteousness and life of God is more simple yet more profound than this. The wholeness of God by which He means to bring harmony to nature and the nations is as exquisite as it is massive. His love is His logos and His logos is His light and restoration power. His word is living and active because this word is the Living Word. It penetrates because it is the righteousness of God that comes from God and is God – not the relative and incomplete righteousness that expressed itself as the laws of good and evil. This is none other than the life of the tree of life that is restored in Jesus and which enters us as we eat Him.

‘His Spirit searches out everything and shows us God's deep secrets’ 1 Cor 2.10 NLT.

‘For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ Heb 4.12 NIV.

‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ Gal 2.20 NIV.

Posts will resume after Feb 24, when I return from India.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Having been raised in Western culture we live out of the notion that we think our creation into being. This is true of a lot of it. You built a cubby house because you imagined it. We have our society and technology because people thought it up. We understand about ourselves because we have history, psychology and sociology. We can become better than we already are through wise reflection. We can be either captured or empowered by our ideas. Western culture is built on the Descartes notion that ‘I am because I think.’ This is part of the truth but not all of it.

I’ve mentioned already that cultures create their own reality. Even though the theory of evolution is an attempt at it, we did not think creation into being. The social construction of reality that arises from the theory of evolution is consistent with its base, which is the knowledge of good and evil. These categories legitimize an environment where the fittest alone are judged worthy of survival. As such Gordon Gekko can say with conviction, ‘Greed is good.’ But God’s love for the world transcends this. The Fittest died so that the unfit might live. In Jesus Christ we see that we are worthy because we are loved as sons. We are made, not to live in the figments of our own minds but to live in God as the sons of God. We are His House and His Family.

Many of us may believe that I think therefore I am. But there is a truth deeper than this and this is it: “I am because I am in God.” Or “I am because God is.’ Or ‘Because God is I am known.’ Or ‘Because I am in God I participate in the new creation by multiplying new creation life.’ Happy are those who know they are sons because they know God as their Father. Such people not only have the mind of Christ. They arise from His being. They are His Offspring.

Originally this was how our world was meant to be constructed. The self, society and our material culture where to have been sourced in God. This is to say, we were to take our being, nature, essence and identity from our Creator. Our system and culture of education, commerce, the arts and government were to be the outworking of our life in Him and His life through us. As Paul put it, ‘In Him we live and move and have our being.’ This is the reality. It is also the reality that Christ is restoring. But many of us have reversed this and imagine that we can think and reason God into existence. That He is the net result of our studies and a production of our Bible reading. Or that He materializes out of us doing community. Or that we will have more of Him if we do simple church rather than complex church.

We may think that God is the result of our Bible study when the reality is that God is because He is. Happy is the man or woman who reads the Bible in God (in the Spirit). From a position in God we grow in knowing God, rather than in knowing a version of scripture than supports a denominational identity or our view of the world.

It may be seen that a life in ‘the letter’ is not only a life lived in prescriptions. It is a letter life is lived out of theology instead of a life lived out of God. This is a situation in which we not only create a god from our own reasoning. We also create a self – a self that is dramatically inferior to the self that is created from living in the Person of Jesus. For this reason, to live in the letter is to live as a shadow in shadows. But to live in God’s Presence is to be a son. By living in I AM, we become who we are. “I am because I live in Jesus.” By living in Jesus, the Person, by the Spirit we advance into the fullness of Christ the Son of God from glory to glory as Paul says. In doing so we ourselves progress from glory to glory because immersion in the Presence of Jesus reveals us as sons.

“For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”Romans 8.14-17 NASB.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

There is a startling difference between teaching that comes from the Spirit and teaching that comes from the letter. God is I AM and His truth simply is. How do we account for the superb clarity with which Jesus and to a lesser extent, Paul spoke about the Kingdom of God? They spoke with authority and not as the scribes. There was no caviling. Their words were living words spoken through them by the Spirit of Life. Here’s a clue to their clarity. They spoke out of revelation and not out of the letter. They lived out of God and not out of the knowledge of good and evil. They were not attempting to represent views they were representing God. They did not speak on behalf of factions and positions they spoke what God had given them to speak. They were not constricted by elements of good or evil found in opposing positions. Their position was in God. They were not so compromised by politics that when they spoke they said everything and so said nothing at all. The task was simple for them. In living out of God they spoke out of good and they spoke the truth.

Every religion, philosophy, world view and mind-set that is not the production of a life lived in God is a production of the knowledge of good and evil. If the being of a thinker is not in God, then neither will be the creations of His mind. Philosophies in the secular sphere that are manifestations of the knowledge of good and evil are the thought of Rousseau, Marx, women’s liberation, evolutionary theory and the passing parade of political correctness. Eastern and Western philosophy are both expressions of the knowledge of good and evil as is capitalism and the society built on its justification.

We were made to live in God to express living thoughts and living words. The purpose of life in the Spirit is to produce life in a physical world – life that is good, wholesome and life-multiplying. For this reason a life lived in Jesus by the Spirit is called the new creation because that’s what it is. It is the outworking of God’s Kingdom through the creative labours of men and women.

But here’s the point I am making about clarity and authority in God’s spokespersons. We can put together a talk from the word of God that is not God’s word and not God’s message to the people to whom we are speaking. When pastors and teachers speak, their talk is not the word of God just because they are using scripture. The word of God is spoken when God is in us speaking through us by His Spirit. We speak in clarity and truth when our hearts are one with God; when we are speaking for God in the one Spirit; when we live in the Spirit; when we are teaching sound doctrine formed by personal revelation from the Spirit who is revealing the heart of God through a son to His sons.

Since the source of revelation is God we can speak His word when we are not using the Bible. It’s not part of the cannon, but it is His rhema word nevertheless. God requires that we speak to the issues of life with wisdom and understanding out of revelation. Those chosen to minister to the practical needs of the people in the early church were full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. God is bigger than His book and so is His world. While all we speak must conform to the framework of Bible, our world is not bounded by its covers and neither is God. If we are living in God, deep rooted in His Person and engulfed in His Presence, we speak and teach His word when dealing with the issues of church, kingdom and earth. God loved the world and gave His son for the redemption of creation. When we live, move and have our being in Jesus we speak His life into our worlds.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Community comes from the Presence of God – never from an absorption in the presence of us.

In the 1980s the words ‘community church’ began to spring up everywhere on notice boards outside churches. Unfortunately writing ‘community church’ outside a church does not make a church into a community and neither does it attract the community into the church. What does attract people, both Christians and non-believers is the Presence of God – the Person of Jesus in and among the Gathered doing what Jesus has always done. Which is imparting His love, life, healing and deliverance to His people.

Community in itself is associated with the Presence of God. God in three persons is community. It is the healing of our mortal wound – alienation from God and fragmentation in ourselves and among ourselves - that creates community. Jesus heals by making us one.

Jesus created community by coming amongst people. The Father sent His Son, His Presence to be with people. The Presence is not an abstraction. The Presence is Jesus, the human face of God meeting people face to face. Jesus’ prayer in John 17 clearly shows that the source of community is the Presence of God. Community occurs when God’s people are blended and intertwined with God as one. The more we are one with God the more we as individuals are unique and distinct. The more we seek God’s Face in the Presence the more our faces are revealed. The more God is known the more we are known as we are. The interdependence of the body begins to flourish. This is to say that community is produced by Gathering in the Presence of Jesus. There is no substitute for God’s Presence and community will not produce community. Genuine community is facilitated by the radical worship of Jesus. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty and community.

‘Community’ can become a little god that wants to squat in house churches and gatherings of all kinds. We need to rise above a worship of abstractions and earnestly seek God’s Presence. Because without the Presence of God we die.

The pursuit of ‘community’ as such binds people to a methodology that is but another form of law and letter. Letter always kills. Those who will not get out of their boat of methodology and walk on water in the Spirit are doomed to wander from one methodology to another in a vain bid to build with human hands the house of God. But Jesus said His House is would not built by human hands. It is built as hearts join themselves to Him, to His Presence, to the reality of intimacy with His Person.

‘How will anyone know that you look favorably on me--on me and on your people--if you don't go with us? For your presence among us sets your people and me apart from all other people on the earth’ Exodus 33.16 NLT.

‘I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have lovedme’ John 17.20-23 NIV.

Saturday, January, 30, 2010

‘My grace is sufficient for you,’ says the Lord. Grace in this context was more than the forgiveness of sin. It was a powerfully overflowing compensation for Paul’s sickness, weakness and faint-heartedness. Some think Paul’s affliction was the reproach and persecution He bore for teaching that life was in Christ and not in Moses. This grace was not an abstraction or theological discussion point. It was the Presence and Person of God with Paul and among others.

We can live theologically and live in the letter or we can live in the Presence by the Spirit and live in grace. The Presence has a Name: Jesus. This reminds me of a story told by Leanne Payne in one of her books on the Presence of God. At the end of days of ministry she was worn out and ill. But she had one more speaking assignment. Feeling sick in the body her spirit pressed on and she determined to finish anyway. During her talk people began looking towards her and many began to weep. She realized that the glory of God – His manifest Presence had appeared beside her.

Grace is not an abstraction. Grace is the Person of Jesus. Grace is the three personed God in you. Grace is The Presence. It has been said that Jesus is the righteousness of God in you. Grace is also the Person of Jesus as you, which should give us relief and joy. It is living as a son of God out of God instead of living out of the knowledge of good and evil. What do I mean? The main reason, I believe, why grace does not shine brightly enough among God’s people is that too many of His people are living out of law, performance, their expectations of themselves and other’s expectations of them. All this instead of living out of God’ Son. All of the above are manifestations of the knowledge of good and evil – a knowledge which is innately judgmental and condemnatory. But hey. Didn’t God say through Paul that there is no condemnation for those who live in Jesus? Since there’s a lot of condemnation among the users of His Name, too many of us must be living in something else.

‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God’ Eph 2.8 NIV.

Not from ourselves and a gift. It’s clear from John 17 that the gift of God is the Presence of God manifest in Jesus. Through Jesus we are drawn into the Presence of the God Family to be interleaved and intertwined by the one Spirit in God. We are in God through Christ, who is in us by the Spirit. Here His Presence imparts to us the holiness of God, the wholeness of the Son of Man and love for each other. By living in the Person of Grace we are empowered to do good and overcome evil without condemning.

‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ Romans 8.1 NIV.

The grace of God is more than unmerited favor. It is the Presence of God in you. As such it is not only the hope of glory. It is the reality of the glory of Christ expressed in our daily life. The beauty of grace is that we do not have to do a whole lot of stuff to get to God. We are already in God and abundantly equipped to do the stuff!

Friday, January, 29, 2010

Some of this may seem deep and metaphysical, but if you can get a grip on it I believe you will be able to live in more peace and multiply more goodwill on earth. Why are people so intrigued with dolphins? I believe it is because they seem to be so at one with themselves and their environment. They seem to be what we would like to be – at one with ourselves and with the world outside us.

Once we were one. Now we can have it again. Before the fall the Father was and we were. Living in I AM we lived in ourselves in harmony and wholeness. We were aligned with God’s will, in union with our inner man and one with nature. We were spared the conflicts of good and evil because we knew God and were known by Him. We were one. One with Him, one in our being and one with the creation. Before the fall we did better than dolphins. God was our Father and we were sons. We were sons of God living in the Spirit of God and eating the fruits of the tree of life.

Following the fall we became destined to struggle over our rights and struggle for justice. We became conflicted between what is and what should be and what is right and what is wrong. After the fall we were still sons. But sons of enslavement and sons of captivity. Birthed as sons of God we became workers and slaves. Here’s the problem. The knowledge of good and evil is issues driven. This the knowledge of ‘is or is not.’ It is knowledge that knows the ideal and the real but is frustrated in attainment. This knowledge is innately bisected, innately two and because of this it is fundamentally conflicted. To be at loggerheads with ourselves, other people and God is the essence of the knowledge of good and evil.

But in Jesus the two have been made one. ‘For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility’ Eph 2.14 NIV. Harmony in our inner man – peace and unity in our spirit, soul and body is the fruit of life as a spiritual person living as a son in the Spirit of Christ. This cannot be completely realised in this life, but all of us can have more peace and harmony in our inner man if we live in Jesus instead of living in law.

The problem is this. Operating in the gifts of the Spirit is not a life lived in the Spirit. People can do this without knowing Christ. This is not my opinion. It is the Lord’s. We are called to live in the Spirit and operate in the gifts of the Spirit. A God-sensitive person operating in the gifts of the Spirit but not living in the Spirit will increasingly experience conflict and generate conflict. The presence of God adjacent the presence of our flesh will jar and clash in our inner man, often producing embarrassing results in our public lives. The cause of this is that an adherence to law, performance, the expectations of ourselves and others has no power to change us. Only Jesus can do this. When the Son of Man lives in us we slowly grow into a son of God and begin to advance from glory to glory.

To live in law is to live from a basis of conflict because conflict is inherent in the knowledge of good and evil. But to live in God’s Son is to receive healing and advance into the enjoyment of God’s peace. Jesus was able to sleep in the back of the boat through a storm because He lived in His Father. In so doing He was living from heaven to earth and was able to bring earth under the authority of heaven.

Thursday, January, 28, 2010

In 1966 Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman wrote a book entitled, ‘The Social Construction of Reality’ which posited that we perceive our worlds through the lens of beliefs and culture of our group. We see what we have been taught to see. We might add that we continue to do this until there is a collision with reality when we either modify our views and change our ways or fade away. Throughout history individuals and nations that do the best are those who are able to live in the discipline of self-criticism and accountability to truth greater than themselves.

Apostles, prophets and Watchmen of God have a duty to draw people out of their self-centered, identity justifying realities into the realm that is real: The Kingdom of God’s Son. Luke in the book of Acts called this ‘the doctrine of the apostles’ which is both simple and profound. We find life in Jesus’ Person and His Name.

There’s a war against fullness in Christ. The soldiers in this war are not atheists. Sadly they are christians intent in living in who they are and what they are. They are protagonists of their identity and culture and intent on living and purveying their own construction of reality. On several occasions I have been present when the supremacy of Jesus over all else has been proclaimed with astonishing lucidity. But on every occasion I have seen the religious spirit attempt to dilute and obscure the truth that has just been presented. Determine that when a clear word is given you do not seek to minimize and dull its import to preserve your status quo – a ‘quo’ that gives you status, but not from God. Zechariah assures us that any house that does this will fall under the curse of God.

This spirit, opposes the supremacy of Christ through believers who have taken offense; through sincere people who have found themselves offended because their religious pride has taken a hit or because a notion on which they have based their security has been undermined. Or maybe it has been revealed that because of the way they live their christianity and interpret the Bible they have been living as a worker rather than as a son. Hence the heart is offended because of the sudden revelation that the self might be somewhat less than it hoped it was. Often such offence is expressed through a layer of emotional blackmail - the syndrome that prompted the rejoinder to Jesus, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone’ John 8.33 NIV. Which brings me to the way we build our view of truth.

If we have been raised in a law based culture and our identity as a group depends on promoting the supremacy of law, then we will interpret the text of the new testament in line with this supposition. We will think that the law written on people’s hearts is the law of Moses when in fact it is not. It is the Person of Jesus imparted into our being by the Spirit of Sonship. It is the Christ that is the exact expression of the Father’s being expressed in you and as you through the core of your being – your heart.

For many years I believed that Jesus lived to enable us to keep the ten commandments. But how could this be so when Jesus says, ‘I am the Way’ and Paul writes, ‘.. If righteousness could be gained through law, Christ died for nothing,’ and ‘all who live under law are under a curse? But Paul is more explicit than this. He writes those who live in Mount Sinai’s laws will never enjoy the inheritance of sons.

‘The slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman (Sarah of the miraculous birth). It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery’ Gal. 4.30-5.1 (NIV). Clearly the yoke of slavery is the law which denies the status of sonship to men and women. Our inheritance is a life without limit. It is a life lived in the Spirit, which is the life of sons in whom the Son of God lives.

Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death to live in Him. Another word for law is ‘letter.’ Paul contrasts the letter which kills, with the Spirit that imparts life. Jesus is the life-giving Spirit imparted to you. Again in contrast to the law of sin and death is the law written on stone. It produces hearts of stone because its origin is letters on stone stone. ‘The ministry that brought death, was engraved in letters on stone’ 2 Cor 3.7 NIV.

Will we get to heaven if we are not sons? Probably, but we will be severely limited in bringing heaven to earth and exercising authority over the Enemy. So are we living in the identity of sons of the Kingdom or are we living as slaves to the identity of our brand and our culture. We can make a choice based on the spirit of politics or the Spirit of Sonship. Whatever the choice be assured that is those who live in the Spirit of God that are the sons of God.

‘If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine’ Matt 10.37 NLT.

‘And this is what the LORD of Heaven's Armies says: I am sending this curse into the house of every thief and into the house of everyone who swears falsely using my name. And my curse will remain in that house and completely destroy it--even its timbers and stones’ Zech 5.2 NLT.

Wednesday, January, 27, 2010

There is a clear difference between the old covenant and the new. In the old man lives out of religion. In the new man lives out of God’s Son. Or is meant to. Unfortunately much religion, including christianity has as much to do with the task of constructing an identity as it does with beliefs. Many christians find there identity and beliefs in ‘their brand’ when they should be finding both in Jesus. The theology of such a christian is an identity driven theology. As such it has more to do with the ethnic religions than we would like to think. The result is that where we would hope that people would take joy in advancing into the fullness of Christ, we often find them resisting revelation and giving themselves over to maintaining and upholding their identity driven theology. Any new light is interpreted in terms of who they are rather than in who they are in God. As a result the glory of Christ in them is dimmed and, their sonship crippled and the Kingdom of God leached of its power.

We all have a place in our Father’s House in Christ. Jesus said, ‘In my Father’s House are places for all.’

To be in Christ in the sense used by Paul is to be in the Spirit. It is to have our being and the activities that identify us sourced and surrounded by the Presence of Christ. To be in Christ is more than believing in Christ and His teachings. The words ‘in Christ’ imply union with God in the terms of oneness described by Jesus in John 17. To be in Christ by the Spirit is to live, move and have our being in the Presence of God’s son. We and God are one. This is union with God. Everything we are and do is the manifestation of Jesus as us. We are an out-working of Him, an expression of Jesus in the world. This is an impossibility in the letter but it is a reality in the Spirit – the Spirit of Christ, the one Spirit.

Christ’s commands are not Moses’ commands. Christ’s command is to live in Him because He is our life, way and truth. ‘Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us’ 1 John 3.24 NIV.
Just as Jesus was the living Word, so in Christ we become the living word of God to the world.

Jesus was fully alive as a man and God’s son because He lived as a son by living out of His Father. The law was kept by Jesus but Jesus did not live out of Law. Jesus lived out of His Father. Sons who are sons in spirit and truth do not live out of law. They live out of Jesus. This is why Paul says, ‘Those who live in the Spirit of God are the sons of God.’ Most of us who came into the Spirit in my denomination came into it out of the letter. Many taught about the baptism of the Spirit and spiritual gifts out of the letter Some still do. But it’s not rocket science to know that the fullness of life in the Spirit is taught best when we live in the Spirit. The reason for this is simple. Life in the Spirit is lived more than taught. To advance into the authority of Christ who had the Spirit without limit we must advance into the Spirit and live by the Spirit as the sons of God.

There remains a lot of the letter about, among those who are Spirit-filled. Much of it surfaces in the theorizing on church planting, simple church and house church formulations. I believe these are advances, but they cannot be realized in the letter – only in the Spirit because the house of God and the city of God are productions of the Spirit of Christ. They arise from His Presence. They are Jesus in people. His church comes not from human hands. Born in the Spirit they become His Body. Letter produces buildings of stones that are dead because the source of letter is dead words on dead stone. The Spirit of Christ produces living stones. This is a season when Jesus calls us to abandon those colonies of the letter in our empires and cede them to the Spirit who is the Presence of God among us.

‘But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin’ 1 John 1.7 NIV.

Tuesday, January, 26, 2010

Many Christians are living an old way when the Father has provided a new and living way. Two scriptures frequently used to frame the new covenant in terms of the old are the ‘laws on your heart scripture,’ which we have already looked at, and the ‘until all be fulfilled scripture.’

Jesus said, ‘For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled’ Matt 5.18 NIV.

Jesus not only fulfilled the Mosaic law. He exceeded it. But in doing this He lived out of His Father as a son. Jesus completely fulfilled the letter for us so that today we can live by the Spirit in Him. Jesus did this by living in the Father and being one with the Father as Adam did not. He fulfilled the law by being a Son and He fulfilled and exemplified Godliness because He was ‘the exact representation of the Father’s being.’

Jesus was complete because He did not live by bread alone but by every word that came from the mouth of God. He did this because the Father was in Him and He was in the Father. The Father and Son were one. Jesus fulfilled what a son of God is and He fulfilled to the utmost the meaning of living according to His Father’s word. Jesus brought us life by obeying the Father and heading towards the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on which He was killed. Where Adam was warned away from the tree of death, the Father’s will was that His Son be crucified on it. Thus this tree was transformed into the tree of life because all had been fulfilled. Jesus brought glory to His Father because He completed all that He had given Him to do.

‘You also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority’ Col 2.10 NLT.

The moment Jesus died on the cross ‘all was fulfilled.’ Because all is fulfilled we are complete in Christ. Nothing remains to be done from God’s point of view. But there is much for us to do. We are to live in God’s Son. We are to live Galatians 2.20. We are to leave off the limitation and fragmentation of words on stone and live by the Spirit in the Person of the living Word. Our role as obedient sons is to live in what God has done in Christ and express Christ who is within. We are called to live in Jesus by the Spirit in the washing of His blood and the impartation of His Person to our being.

The wages of law breaking is death. Thanks to the Father, His Son has died for us. We can either live in the fullness of His accomplishment or live in the brokenness and estrangement of letters on stone. We can be sons and heirs or workers. But only the former have the authority to facilitate the Kingdom of God’s Son because it is sons who advance the Kingdom of the King.

‘Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God’ Romans 7.4.

‘For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God’ Gal 2.19 NIV.

‘So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir’ Gal 4.3-7 NIV.

Monday, January, 25, 2010

‘Everything was created through him and for him’ COL 1.16 NLT. We are living in a time of unparalleled potential. God is drawing His sons and daughters away from man-centeredness to God-centeredness. He is separating us to Himself, separating His people from an us-centered religion to the experience of His Presence with us and in us. The Presence is the unveiling of God. The Presence is the unbinding and unveiling of God’s sons. It is in the Presence of God that we see the glory of God and experience the restoration of the glory of man.

Love, community, identity, purpose, unity and knowledge of the Kingdom find their source in intimacy with God. These are fruits of dwelling in His Presence. They are qualities to be enjoyed as a result of being His Family and living in His House and living from heaven to earth. But they are not ends in themselves. They are not stand alones. They should never be allowed to take precedence over the supremacy of Jesus and His real presence. (I emphasise real presence because many christians confuse the presence of themselves with the presence of God).

Seek first His Kingdom and all these will be added to you is synonymous with seek first His Presence and you will have these things in abundance. You will know God. You will understand yourself. You will see the glory and purpose of your sister, you will be made into the one new person in Christ. You will have freedom and be filled with Christ’s righteousness.

We have been made to live in God in order to become sons of God. In Him we live and move and have our being. In Christ the reality of family is written into our hearts to pervade our being. In I AM I am who I am and we are who we are. We advance in becoming who God made us to be and who Jesus redeemed us to become by growing into the fullness that comes from His Presence within and without.

Beware humanist-christian hybrids posing as the Kingdom. Never forget this. An addiction to the Presence of Christ will unveil your identity. It will establish the identity and purpose of your group. But a focus on identity cannot produce the Presence of God, nor can it produce identity. We find our being, our purpose, our identity as persons and as fellowships in the Presence of Jesus.

‘And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy’ COL 1.18 NIV.

‘For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ’ Col 1.19 NLT.
‘For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body’ COL 2.9 NLT.

‘And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself’ Eph 1.23 NLT.

‘He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things’ Eph 4.10 NASB.

‘Everything was created through him and for him’ COL 1.16 NLT.

Friday, January, 22, 2010

In Jesus, the Word became flesh. Your privilege, inheritance and authority as a son is that in the Spirit, Jesus becomes you.
‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth’ John 1.14 NIV.

Thursday, January, 21, 2010

Jesus has saved us from the realm of darkness and placed us in His realm of light. Knowledge of good and evil is darkness and judgment. Life in the Son of God is light and grace. There is no condemnation for those who live in God’s Son but there is condemnation for those who live in the knowledge of good and evil, which is the realm of law, performance and judgment.

Law plus Jesus is law. Jesus and only Jesus is living in God.

A life lived in a jot of letter is an-all-letter-life. A life lived in the letter condemns us and leads us to condemn others. Living in law we live in letters carved on stone, as Paul says in 2 Cor 3.7-9. Here we live in limitation instead of limitless glory. These stone engraved precepts bring death to our spirit, benumb our hearts and hobble our wholeness. The realm of light is God’s realm of no condemnation. But there is condemnation for those who do not live in Jesus and there is condemnation flowing from us when we abuse Jesus by attempting use Him to foster a life lived out of law and its stone figments and fragments.

The law is not the only source of judgementalism. We can have rock solid ideas of the way people should dress, speak, eat and deport themselves and use this internal frame to despise and control others. Such attitudes shrink us and bind others. Like law its source is the knowledge of good and evil. But we are called to live in God by advancing into the fullness of Jesus. By so doing we empower ourselves and liberate others.

A law-method-performance based life is impossible to hide. Observing myself and others I have noted that law produces a split personality. We might advance in spiritual giftings but remain plagued with a judgmental outlook. We might operate in spiritual gifts yet stumble over stones of offence, taking offence and offending others. While we may advance in the things of the Spirit, we remain crippled by emotional illness that is sourced in judgment because we do not yet live in the Spirit. We merely live in the letter and talk the Spirit.

Living in some law we live all law, sons in principle and workers in fact. But Jesus has set us free to set others free. The Spirit of Sonship is also the Spirit of freedom and grace that produces living water. Those who live in the Spirit of God are the sons of God.

‘And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit’ 2 Cor 3.18 NIV.

Wednesday, January , 20, 2010

The law of the Spirit of life sets us free from the law of sin and death. It source is heaven, not earth, spirit and not flesh. It is life, spirit and light. It is Jesus expressing Himself through us. This is the Person of God infused into the person of man. It is the Son of God incarnate in men and women. It is the Son of God maturing sons to reign on the earth; to be a new man and usher in the new creation.

In Christ we are both lawful and free. But in the law of Moses or the many laws of performance and expectation we are bound, lawless, condemned and condemning.

The law of the Spirit of life is Jesus expressing Himself through us. Jesus declaration about the sabbath relates to all law. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Law was made for man, not man for law. In God man was made to rule over all and all things were for man. This is restored to the extent that we live in Jesus. All things come under our feet because all things are under Christ’s feet – if we are in Him and not in things! In Jesus freedom and law are expressed through the person since the logic of the universe is the living Word who lives in you. The genius of God’s salvation of the world in Christ is this: In Christ we are brought into alignment with God and His creation. In Christ the people of earth and the creation become one.

In the Spirit this is already a fact. But not yet so on earth. This is why we must live in the Spirit towards earth so that His Kingdom will come and His will is done on earth as it is in heaven. We can release and multiply His Kingdom now when we live as sons of the Father. The law of the Spirit of life is Person to person. It is Christ in us.

‘And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ--everything in heaven and on earth’ Eph 1.10 NLT.

Tuesday, Jan 19, 2010

Many christians are doing a whole lot of things to get to Jesus. But the sons of God live in Jesus and do the stuff – stuff being defined as being holy because God is holy, expanding the Kingdom of God in the world, defeating the Enemy and his demonic power, shining the light of God, exposing the lies of the Father of lies, establishing sons and setting captives free. They do this because they live in God’s Son, washed by His grace and filled with His life. Jesus’ church is Jesus multiplied – the Person of God’s Son in the Father’s sons.

If we have been raised in a culture of law and letter, we are very likely to interpret the new testament as God’s way of making law and letter successful. Evidence of this is that many interpret ‘laws on your heart’ as Moses written into people’s hearts. Many folk raised in law are unaware that there is a new covenant. Others know of it and view it as a conspiracy. They call it ‘new covenant theology’ seeing it as a plot to do them out of a plank in their theology. Others re-interpret and revise it to make the new covenant what it is not – the law of Moses amplified in Christ. No friends. The new covenant is God’s reality for the restoration of the new creation.

Let’s break through the robbery that has for too long posed as sound doctrine. The New Covenant is Christ the Son of God in you; the Person who is the righteousness of God living in you by the Spirit. It is a new and living way because it is you intermingled, joined to God and one with God courtesy of the fact of the cross and the power of the Spirit of Life.

Paul declares that the ministry that brought death was engraved on letters of stone. Let there be no doubt that the law of sin and death is the ten commandments and that God is not writing stone letters on into people’s hearts. Your heart is not a gravel pit of laws, regulations and should do’s. It is the place where Christ, the Person enters your being. It is the place where the Spirit of sonship kisses your spirit and transforms your life from glory to glory.

The law of sin and death arose when Adam’s race stepped into the knowledge of good and evil. It came to an end at the cross. The law of the Spirit of life is Jesus. He sets us free from the law of sin and death. We are now free from striving to live as ‘un-condemned.’ By living in the Father as His Son Jesus kept the letter perfectly overcoming the law of sin and death - but not so that we would remain slaves of it. Jesus liberated us into the domain of ‘sons.’ In this kingdom of righteousness and life, we live in the Father by living in Jesus. Jesus the Son fills us with the Spirit of Sonship. The bottom line is that we will do better at holiness by living in Jesus than living in Moses because those who live in the Spirit of God are the sons of God. They grow into the likeness of their Father.

Now the LORD said to Moses, "Come up to Me on the mountain and remain there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction" Exodus 24:12

Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious. If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! 2Cor. 3.7-9 (NIV).

Monday, Jan 18, 2010

Our true identity is found in Christ. An attempted identity derived from your church plus christ is not your real identity. And such a ‘christ’ is not Lord. It is a ‘social construction.’ You are the real you to the extent that you find your being in Jesus alone. Why? You were made to live in God. Then in Christ you were redeemed to live in God’s Son as a son. Where Jesus is not Lord, you are not a son. You may be a worker, a member or a follower but you will not be a daughter or son of God.

The extent to which we find our identity in Jesus alone is the extent to which we are the church before which demons shudder.

The extent to which our identity is parceled out to other things is the extent to which our identity as sons of God is diluted. The degree to which our identity is diluted is the extent to which the Enemy has the right to usurp our authority as sons – which brings me to my point. Many Christians attempt to find their identity in a denomination or a church. These days often in a house church. If you find your identity in Jesus alone, you will be His church and He will build His church through you. But if who you are is formed by the sense of self you get from a church, denomination or ‘doing community’ your authority as a son is greatly diminished. You live robbed.

If your heart says, ‘I live to love and serve Jesus and my being is rooted in Him’ you will know who you are and what He means you to be doing. He will lead you in your associations. But if you live to justify a denomination and your place in it you will not discern the Kingdom of God or know what Jesus is doing. You will lived in confusion and call this ‘your convictions,’ misguided though they may be.

Others are still born because their lives are embedded in law. So steeped in law are they that they repeatedly revise the Christ-life into a law-life. Jesus does not live to help us keep the commandments of Moses. He lives so that we can be like Him – Sons of God! You are called to be embedded in Christ, deep-rooted and flowering in Him. Sons of God live in the Spirit of God.

Read the Bible to justify the identity you have in belonging to a denomination, a church or your personal views and you will not see God or understand His ways. Read the Bible with a heart that says, ‘Lord, reveal to me who You are and I will believe’ and you will come to know God as He is, rather than as He has been made out to be.

God is much better than you think and so are you!

2010 A MORE EXCELLENT WAY

By Kriston Couchey

LOSING MY WILL
In this hour of transition Father is calling His people to die. We are being called to death to our own ways, thoughts, attitudes and actions. This call is to die to our own will and way in order that we might become the full expression of Christ on the earth. Paul wrote, "It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me." This is not the year of doing FOR Christ, or asking "What would Jesus do?" This is the year to do what He is doing NOW because He is doing it in and through us. Father is not asking us to live our lives for Him, He is asking us to die in order to let Him Live His life out through us.

How do we get there? Do we determine by an act of our will to be a slave to the will of God and do His every bidding and faithfully obey every command in our own effort and strength? We must to choose in this hour to lose out own wills and do only His. But, the son of the bond woman still has no inheritance with the son of the free. Cast out the son of the bondwomen.

A slave does not know his masters business and serves out of duty and requirement to fulfill His masters commands. Father is not calling slaves, He is calling sons. Servants obey the law of the Lord. Sons fulfill the law of the Lord because they have their Father's heart. He is raising sons of His Love that serve because they express and fulfill the law of Love. They become slaves of Love that willingly lay down their lives; just as the Son of Love did 2000 years ago. A new command was given by Jesus, Love one another, and in this you have fulfilled both the law and the prophets. You can follow God because you have to. Or, you can become the fulfillment of Father's desires because they are your own.

I have one task from Father this year so far. That task is to simply forsake all other passions to rest in Father's Love.

Kriston Couchey

http://my.opera.com/Boanerges/blog/

Friday, Jan 15, 2010

Jeremiah wrote, “This is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day," says the LORD. "I will put my [laws] instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” Jer 31.33 NLT. This side of the cross we are able to unwrap what this means in terms of the righteousness that comes from God apart from law.

1. The covenant Jeremiah speaks of is new, not old and not a re-invention of the old. The covenant is ‘new.’ It is a new and living Way. It is Jesus in you.

2. The laws and instructions are written deep within people because they become part of their being as Christ enters by the Spirit. God’s people do what people do who are lived in by God’s Son. They do what sons do because they are sons!

3. Not only will they belong to the Father. Their inheritance as sons has been restored. They are sons not slaves. Subject to Christ, all things, including the Enemy are under their feet.
There are slight differences in the way this scripture is used in the book of Hebrews: ‘I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds’ Heb 10.16 NIV. This is much more than any of us attempting to be good because Jesus died for us. Frankly, our love is not that good! No, it’s righteousness from God from first to last. It is ‘us’ being sons because The Son is living in us, becoming us! As we give Jesus our hearts the Father gives us His Son by the Spirit. Living in Jesus we are one with God and the universe being recreated by God. As our hearts eat and drink Jesus His life floods our being. Starting in our hearts He makes His way to our minds and we have the mind of Christ.

‘I live because of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, anyone who feeds on me will live because of me’ John 6.57 NLT.

Thursday, Jan 14, 2010

We’re heading swiftly into 2010. It’s Tuesday January 12 today and I have just spent the weekend at a Christian Conference, our annual Gathering. Here Bil Ghali of Berowra Baptist spoke on the essence of the Christ-life, which is that we live in Christ instead of living in law and its variations. Let’s be clear. Bil’ topic was not living in the idea of Christ. It was living in His Presence – living in the reality of God in us and with us. Living in Jesus.

Either what Bil, myself and others are increasingly teaching is the Kingdom of God or it is cod’s wallop. If you see it as the latter prepare to see the renewal group to which you belong fade and the church in general collapse. If it the Kingdom of Christ among us prepare to see remarkable advances. If we are to advance into the authority of sons, equipped with the power to defeat the Enemy, we must rise above saying ‘yes, yes’ and actively live in the Spirit of Christ as the sons of God instead of living in the various modes of performance. We live by the one Spirit in God through Jesus (1Cor. 12.13).

I have been writing on this topic for two years. What Bil said was identical to what I have been teaching in these posts – which is that just as Jesus lived in His Father as the Son, so we live in Jesus as sons and daughters of God. Sons live out of Person, not out of rules. Slaves, workers and orphans live out of rules. Sons obey the Father’s command to live in His Son. ‘This is My Son. Live in Him! My Son said, ‘I am the Way. Live in Him!’

Jesus is the righteousness of God in us. He is the Son of God in us. He is the One in whom we are the sons of God advancing from glory to glory. In Jesus we are both free and lawful because Jesus is the living word, the law of the Spirit of life, the logic of the universe and the One in whom all things hold together. But the law of the Spirit of life is not the law of Moses. It is not an ‘it’. It is a Him!’

Did you know that those who refuse to live in the new covenant are not lawful. They are lawless. Why? Because Christ in you alone is the righteousness of God in you.

The Kingdom of God is Jesus written on our hearts. When the prophet wrote, ‘I will write my law on their hearts’ he was writing in terms that people of the day understood. Whatever he thought he was writing, he was not writing of Moses’ laws being written on hearts. Unbeknown to himself he was writing of Jesus, the righteousness sent from God (Rom. 3.22) being written into people’s hearts in the Spirit. This is the new and living way, Jesus. Jesus, the living way of being made right with God and the new and living way of God’s holiness becoming you and more. Of you becoming God’s daughters and sons.

The sons of God live in the Spirit of God. They live from heaven to hearth. The law of Moses is from the earth. But the law of the Spirit of life comes from heaven to live in you. Those who believe live as sons in God’s Son and heaven is within them. Unlimited advancement in God is never associated with the law of Moses. But is it the inheritance of those who lived in Jesus and in whom Jesus lives. The nifty thing about the new and living way is that Jesus not only lives in you. He becomes you, making the most of your individuality while placing you exactly where you are meant to be in His House.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God John 1.1 (NIV).

‘Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death’ Rom. 8.2 (NIV).

Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! 2Cor. 37-.9 (NIV).

‘We have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body’ Heb. 10.19,20 (NIV).