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'Being Human: What it means in terms of spirit and flesh.

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).