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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
The Father often presents Himself to me with the words ‘Not by might or power but by My Spirit.’ A rough translation of this could be, ‘Not by you but by Me!’ In the Old Testament certain people were led by the Spirit of God. Saul for a time became a new man. David lived in intimacy with God. Enoch walked with God and Moses sought God’s face. None of them, however were indwelt by God in the sense that God was incarnate in them. This came with the incarnation of God’s Son as Immanuel. God became flesh and dwelt in and among human beings. Following the death and resurrection of Jesus humanity become joined to God through the Person of Jesus. Following Pentecost the Person of Jesus come to dwell in man. Now God is incarnate in man and human beings and God are one by the One Spirit.
‘But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him’ 1 Cor 6.17 NLT.
None of this is real for you if you don’t believe it. But should you believe, union with God is yours.
It is by the Son of Man that humans are joined to God. It is by the Holy Spirit that Jesus lives in and among us today. It is by the Father that God’s love is revealed to the world through Jesus. Jesus is multiplied in those who have now become the sons and daughters of God.
Belief in God’s terms means ‘heart belief.’ Since God is love the power of His life in you comes through the connection that Jesus has made with us through our hearts. When the hearts of men and women are joined to Jesus the Spirit of God flows into our spirit and our earthly life becomes ignited with the Presence of Heaven.
There are degrees of being. Should our lives be consumed with eating, drinking and copulating, we are little better than the animals. Not a few view humans are no more than sophisticated animals, the result of which is that they are unable to rise any higher than the way they see themselves. There are degrees of being. Spinoza remarked, ‘I think therefore I am.’ In doing so he gave rise to what humanism conceives as the beginning and end of man – the ability to reason. There are Christians who are trapped in this cage of mirrors and they are stunted as a result. Bound to themselves and their own thoughts they are unable to receive the revelation of God and rise above their sense of self and their own thoughts to live in the Spirit and by the Spirit.
Jesus indicated that good reasoning was not enough. A teacher had offered what was a comprehensive understanding of Godliness. But Jesus replied, ‘You are not far from the Kingdom of God.’ This man was near the Kingdom but not in it. To be in the Kingdom one has to eat Jesus with one’s heart. To desire Jesus is to receive Him, become one with Him and be transformed by Him. This is a transformation of our being, the results of which are the fruits of the Spirit.
There are degrees of being. Jesus is the perfect example of what it means to be a son/daughter of God. It is because of Jesus that we can grow up into the fullness of Christ. To live in Christ and have Jesus as our life is to grow continually into the state of being that Jesus won for us at the cross: Sons and daughters of God.
We can live for pleasure, live out of our heads and live for religion without experiencing the life in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit cannot be lived through the law, through theology or through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is lived entirely IN THE SPIRIT because Jesus is our life.
Maybe you have wondered why some fellowships fight among themselves or if not fighting subsist not far above misery. There are degrees of being. We can act as sons and daughters of God or as ‘mere men.’ We can live in the Spirit according to the New Covenant or we can remain in the Old as ‘mere men’ striving to do our best in the flesh. But since the flesh is a jailer we remain captive as slaves, not rising to our inheritance in the Spirit as the sons of God.
To Paul acting as ‘mere men’ is living in the flesh. The flesh ranges in meaning from living in rebellion, to living in pleasure, to living out of the law and performance orientation (1 Cor 3.3 NIV). Paul says, ‘You are still worldly and still controlled by your sinful nature. As a result we are not competent to minister to yourselves or anyone else. Our life is found not in the might of our performance or the power of our supposed identity. It is found in the Spirit of Christ with abundant healing power for all who believe.
The flesh counts for nothing. It is the Spirit that gives life. It is spirit that brings life into the world. It is spirit that builds the Kingdom of God on earth. It is the Spirit of Sonship that enfolds us in the embrace of the Father’s love. It is the Spirit of God that fills our efforts with the might and power of God.
‘You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?’ 1 Cor 3.3 NIV.
‘These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God's Spirit in them’ Jude 1.19 NLT.
‘Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil’ James 3.15 NIV.
‘The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned’1 Cor 2.14 NIV.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
The age of the Kingdom is not meant to revive the church. It is meant to create a new kind of church whose life is the Person of Jesus writ large.
This present outpouring is not a rubbing of Holy Spirit oil into an old wineskin. It is a new wineskin with new wine. The wineskin is new in the sense that it is the most radical and all transforming example of Christ in you that has ever been seen. The wine is new in that it is un-polluted by the additions and substitutes of human beings. It is wine without mixture. Wine that is the pure and unadulterated presence of Christ not only in His people but manifest in the flesh of His people. Here is the church in which the spirit of God’s people become engulfed and alive with the life-giving Spirit.
‘The Scriptures tell us, "The first man, Adam, became a living person." But the last Adam--that is, Christ--is a life-giving Spirit’ 1 Cor 15.45 NLT.
The Kingdom of God is certainly not our denomination or ‘with it church’ plus an amazing dousing of Holy Spirit power. It is not this because the Kingdom of God is not a layer of Holy Spirit giftings over an Old Covenant mentality. The Kingdom of God will never come to us by living in Adam, Moses or some celebrated man or woman of God for one simple reason. The Kingdom of God is Jesus imparted to your life. We can no more represent the life-giving power and authority of Jesus by living in the Old Covenant than you can grow a paddock of wheat in a saucer on damp cotton wool. Yet this is what some presume to attempt.
When Christ is our life the life of Christ changes the world, recreating the foundations and basic tenets of existence and society. The Kingdom of God is a tree rooted in Jesus and nothing else.
A friend of mine saw a church that had begun to function in spiritual gifts as an old truck that had been given a new coat of paint. The paint was new but the old truck remained old and worn out. Miracles occurred in the Old Testament but not to the same extent that was witnessed in the life of Jesus or that is meant to be seen today. Any Believer today has greater authority than John the Baptist because Christ and His authority lives in him. We need to be clear about this. The authority over Satan and life circumstances that Jesus exercised can only be wielded by sons of God who live in the Spirit. “In the Spirit” means living in Christ and not in Adam or in Moses. The new and living way is the way of Christ in us.
‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6 NIV.
It was Jesus Christ who lived from His Father alone who rose from the dead gaining the victory over death. A life in religion, performance and law is weakness, decay and death. It perpetuates death in the name of God. Jesus has been raised from the dead, lifted up and lives to draw all into His resurrected life. Those who live in Jesus and who live by His life alone have power to raise dead things to life and bring life to dead people. In Christ they recreate the earth because they are the new creation and they are life since they live by the Son of Man.
‘Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’ John 6.53 NIV.
‘Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies’ John 11.25 NIV.
Further Reading: In depth article by Ron McGatlin here.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Anyone can have enough wisdom to be reasonably discerning. The beginning of wisdom is ‘fearing the Lord.’ This means worshiping God and doing what He says. Intelligence is a help, but is not a guarantee of wisdom or discernment. There are very intelligent people who are notoriously undiscerning – which is not obvious to themselves but it is to those who know them. Then there are quite simple people who astonish you with their discernment. In their case it comes from a humble, pure heart that seeks after God and understands His Kingdom.
I once taught a small class of students in social science who were at the bottom of the academic stream. It was a pleasant experience and they made good progress, possibly learning as much if not more than some of their more self-absorbed peers. They learned chiefly because they had the humility to listen and give attention to what was being said.
There are people of moderate intellect who don’t possess this attitude. They are not celebrities and not in high status jobs but neither are they humble. They are quite satisfied with their own views. They maintain themselves in various positions of bondage and limited potential because they talk so much and listen so little. They don’t listen enough to learn. They are very much attracted to what they have to say, yet belong to that class of people who talk a lot without saying anything. The time is coming when the humble really will inherit the earth and take the positions of leadership that Jesus has given to them in the church.
There are people about who insist on being leaders irrespective of their ability to lead. They find themselves in these positions due to personal overconfidence or because others who dread change have placed them there. These people were born to minister in particular sphere and can do this with distinction. But they are ministers of the table and not of the word. The Spirit of Christ among us does not rob us of individuality or the purpose for which we have been gifted to serve. If we are in the Spirit of Christ, our uniqueness will be revealed so that we can enrich our group life by being who we are.
The emergence of the house church has provided an opportunity for some
to be confident in their incompetence and limited understanding of what Jesus is doing and what He requires of us. This may be because we still live in the flesh and have moved side ways from an institutional church into a simple church where we propagate the same thing. Or it may be because we have acclimatized ourselves to a culture of sentimentality, emotionalism and group dynamics that we mistake for the Presence of the Holy Spirit.
The latter can produce a category of people who imagine they are receiving and giving a ‘word’ from God when the reality is quite different. Mike Bickle stated a truth in a book I read long ago when he wrote ‘They have a weak mind and lose tongue.’ In this season the wise will shine like the sun while all that is hollow will be revealed for what it is.
‘Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces’ Matt 7.6 NIV.
‘But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted’ Luke 14.10-11 NIV.
A life in God’s Son will equip all to live with grace and competence. We will become who we are and positioned to do what we are meant to be doing because a life in the Presence of God reveals who we are.
When we are attracted to Jesus we will also be attracted to those in whom He lives and speaks. Seeking Jesus’ face, we will behold our own faces and those with whom we worship. We will understand one another from the Spirit and not the flesh. We will have an accurate idea of what God is doing and what we are meant to be doing. Together Jesus will reveal our true selves to us and our community. We will be positioned in His House as living stones. Such stones are strong, alive and accurately positioned because they live in God and not in themselves and their false assumptions. They are fruitful and multiply because they are most truly themselves and doing what God made them to do.
There are blind leaders of the blind. There are blind folks who attempt to lead people who can see. There are also sighted leaders who help others walk in the revelation of God and discerning leaders who walk with those moving as one in the light of what Jesus is doing now.
Jesus sets before us an open door. He is the Doorway to who we really are. If we behold His face and hear his voice He will close doors to those possibilities that are not us and open doors when opportunities arise for us to serve as who we are. We are the most life-giving to each other and the most devastating to the Enemy when we are living in our genuine identity and purpose.
‘Wisdom calls aloud in the street,
she raises her voice in the public squares;
at the head of the noisy streets she cries out,
in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: “How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?’ Prov 1.20-22 NIV.
‘Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him’ John 14.21 NIV.
‘So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables’ Acts 6.2 NIV.
‘Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them’ Acts 6.3 NIV.
Note on the picture: Pride leads us to force open doors that do not belong to us and were not meant for us to enter.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
THE SPIRIT OF SONSHIP AND THE SONS OF GOD
Repentance is not some moralistic thing. It’s a call to turn from all that is weak and withered to the extravagant life of those who find their being in Jesus.
Christ’s cross reveals what we are and who we can become. To reveal to people their true condition and to uncover to them what they can become is the most loving thing that can be done for any man, woman, denomination or town.
But there are some to whom repenting does not come easily. They are convinced that they are the church and the church is them. They belong to the tradition in which religion is society and society is religion. Mentioning their sin and deficiencies is defined as ‘being negative,’ and taken as a personal offence. Far from repenting they accuse those whom God sends to them of ‘trashing the church.’ But in so doing they participate in the sin of those who crucified the One who came to give them life.
‘For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.’ Acts 17.28 NIV.
To have the life of God is to be more than un-dead. To live in the Son of God is to be a spiritual being, twice breathed into life by the Father. Unless we are born again we will not see the Kingdom of God. This can mean that we will not participate in eternal life. Or it can mean, that as churched and Christian as we may be, we cannot take on the authority, power and nature of those who are sons of God. Tozer points out that humans are not bodies which are inhabited by a spirit. We are spirits who have a body. Note that the Father breathed Himself into clay. Our divine nature comes from our Father not the clay. His Name is hallowed on earth because we are part of Him. Empowerment to do His will on earth as it is in heaven is ours because we are His Sons.
How we define ourselves determines what we can become. The words ‘Now are we the sons of God’ pulses with meaning when we consider that what it means to be a Son of God. How we define a son of God has been revealed for all to see. This is Jesus the SON OF MAN.
‘Let me put it as clearly as I can. The sons of God live in the Son of God. They live this way ‘in the Spirit’ because this is the only way the Person of Jesus can become your life!’
We are not ‘born again’ just because we are moral and ethical people. We are born again because we are dead to our natural selves and alive to our supernatural selves by the Spirit of Christ. It’s unlikely that we will be born again if we have not perceived the depth of our degradation and the height of our potential as spirit beings who are sons and daughters of God. We were not created as intelligent lumps of meat. We really are made in the image of God.
‘God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth’ John 4.24 NIV.
We can talk all we like about the infinite value of a human life. We can repeat the mantra of the harmonious development of the mental, physical and spiritual aspects of our being. But unless we actually live in God, courtesy of Jesus and the Holy Spirit we remain wooden, stilted and only fractionally alive.
In the flesh and from the earth, we live far below the potential of the sons and daughters of God. Why? Without the understanding that the human person is truly spiritual only when the human spirit is joined to the Spirit of God, what we call ‘spiritual’ is merely physical and mental. Thus we subject ourselves to a bad deal. We lose the ability ‘to see’ the Kingdom of God because we have cut ourselves off from that which defines us as kings - daughters and sons of God.
“But the Father has bestowed on us The Spirit of Sonship.’
Repentance is not some moralistic thing. It’s a call to turn from all that is weak and withered to the extravagant life of those who find their being in Jesus.
In calling Us to repent, Jesus is calling us to become who we are.
‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is’ 1 John 3.2 KJV.
‘You received the Spirit of Sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father" Rom 8.15 NIV.
‘In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again’ John 3.3 NIV.
‘For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God’ Rom 8.14 NIV.
Friday, November 25, 2011
To be born again is to have died to religion in all its forms and have risen to a life in Christ that is Christ Himself. New birth is to live in resurrection and life and not to live in the knowledge of good and evil and death. It is to have Jesus as your life.
‘The unpalatable truth is that most who say they are born again are not born again. Most who say they live in Christ actually live in the knowledge of good and evil.’ The effects and cure for this can be found in the book, ‘The Torch and the Sword.’
Through Jesus, the Father restored the human race to a life in God. In so doing the Father removed all who will believe from the power of the tree of death and placed them under the tree of life – there to eat its fruits and feast on the Bread of Heaven.
‘The tree of life is the cross, which no human can by pass and live.’
Many think that being born again is moving from a poor morality into a good morality. But this is not it. It is becoming dead to you and alive to Christ.
A disciple of Jesus lives in integrity and holiness. But not from the power of integrity and holiness. The wisdom, discernment and life-giving influence of the Godly man and woman come from Christ flowing through them.
The tragedy of religious Christianity is this: Many of the so called ‘born again’ are not really born again, because they are blind and dead men. Having no true perception of their depravity or any inkling of their potential glory as sons of God they live in a coma of Christianity without any genuine relationship with Christ. Why ‘know Christ’ if you don’t think you really need Him?
Unfortunately for more than a few, Christianity is a life that continues in the flesh. This is not in the flesh as in immorality. It is in the flesh as a proponent of religion outside the power or presence of God. Such people are not always traditionalists and conservatives tied to the past. They may inhabit the ‘cutting edge’ and the latest formulations of church. Majoring in formulae and with their attention on people and themselves rather than on Christ, they perpetuate salvation by religion in new forms, disillusioning many and presuming to act for God. Thankfully these desolate places - or tares by one name and wood, straw and trinkets by another - are on the verge of being up-rooted.
They do have a function in God’s schemes of things, since He can bring good out of every evil. Those who have a heart for God and a passion for Jesus eventually abandon these husks without the essence. They go to the One who is always enough and who always satisfies with infinite and unfading life.
For those who have turned away from walking in the fullness of the Spirit there needs to be a return to the place where they left the Spirit and a full overcoming of whatever it was that caused them to turn away. Listen to what the Spirit is saying to the Churches.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
It’s not hard to see why God describes people as sheep. Having been raised on the land I have observed that sheep are indeed as silly as sheep. They jump over objects that do not exist and refuse to go through gates that do!
Gina, George and Cedric are good people. They love Jesus and enjoy doing what they think is His work. But they act like blind folks. The are unable to tell when the spirit of man or the Holy Spirit is operating. They join things not instigated by the Spirit of Christ and avoid many things that are. They don’t see things in the Spirit, they expend themselves in wasted effort and their authority and effectiveness is diminished as a result. Discernment is a gift. But a gift based on a life – a life that is not our own but Christ in us and through us. All Believers can discern but some are gifted with it as Watchmen on the walls.
The gift of discernment is frequently perceived as being unkind and judgmental by those who do not have it. Especially if we are involved in legalism and performance. ‘Law bound’ believers resent discernment even as they dispense judgment. The fruits of the tree of knowledge provide judgment and reproach but never discernment and love. It may be that we perceive grace as ‘being nice’ and not giving offence. But our idea of what is pleasing or offensive to God remains limited as a result of our distance from Christ. Non-discernment will lead us to opt to offend Christ rather than people.
The antidote to a lack of discernment is intimacy with God. The key to sharp discernment with grace is union with God. The gift of discernment in those who are deep rooted in Christ is effective and powerful. Excellence of discernment is produced by living in God and not in the knowledge of good and evil. Love with discernment is a powerful weapon against the Enemy. It results in the establishment of God’s Best rather than that which is merely good.
The Kingdom of God is administered by Christ’s kings and priests. They reign on the earth and they multiply His resurrection life. Kings and priests are by definition sons and daughters of God who have been re-born out of Adam (and Moses) into Christ. The authority of such people is infinite when it is released under the direction of Jesus. But this authority and the discernment that goes with it can only be released if we have been born again. Unless we have left Adam behind to live in Jesus we cannot see the Kingdom of God, let alone administer its power.
‘In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again’ John 3.3 NIV.
‘Seeing’ involves an inner knowing about what is of God and what is not. It involves the ability to discern motives such as whether a heart is involved in self-promotion or self-sacrifice or whether a ministry is operating out of mixture or purity. Discernment involves the ability to interpret the spiritual landscape and see it as God views it. Discernment is distinct from the ability to prophecy as it involves the ability ‘to see’ the nature of the relationships that are operating in a given setting. The Lord may give a person a ‘word’ yet the same person may not be aware of the spiritual landscape and the forces in operation in that setting. It is for this reason that the gifts are complementary and are exercised in community.
‘The most conflicted persons are those who attempt to operate in the Spirit while remaining in the law. Their inner life is unstable and their discernment unreliable.’
It’s possible that Gina, George and Cedric live in the concept of the new birth but not in the reality. Reality is Christ. To see and administer the Kingdom of God we must be born again. Self in Adam must be dead and self in Jesus must be our reality. We must live in the inheritance of sons and be a new creation. This means living in the New Covenant which is spirit not law, person and not letter, light and not confusion, life and not death.
‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6 NIV.
‘For the word [discernment] 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.
Less is More!
During these past few year the Lord has charged me with unveiling the glory of the Son of Man. He has urged that I stress and declare that Jesus is our life – and that we cease living in the knowledge of good and evil (the regime of Adam) and step into God through Jesus. This is basically a call to repentance and allowing Jesus to draw us into Himself. He wants us to cease living in ourselves and live in Him. This is the meaning of ‘Not by might or power but by My Spirit’ and the essence of the following prophetic word – ‘Less is more.’
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
There is a big difference between the attitudes born of the flesh and the attitudes that are natural to the Spirit. Watchman Nee writes on these extensively. Yet in our time the Lord has cast even more light on this topic by showing His people that to live in the Spirit, we must live in Christ; live in union with Christ so that our being and His being become one by the Holy Spirit. To do this we abandon what seems normal and intuitive – a life in Adam in the knowledge of good and evil. Then we agree with what the Father has done in His Son and we receive Jesus as our life and the Means to live in God. We either live in God or we live in ourselves. We either live in the Spirit or we live in the flesh. The new birth is our life in Jesus that has marked our transfer from life in the flesh to a life in God.
‘Living in the flesh is not just living in immorality and pleasure. It is living in law, letter, formulations and religion.’
Jesus is doing much today. Crooked ways are being made straight and un-sound doctrine is being replaced by the teaching of Christ. We are seeing this as we come to understand the Kingdom of God and what the church really is.
Yet we cannot manufacture The Kingdom of Christ the King if all we are doing is changing from an institutional church to a house church. We need to change from flesh to Spirit, law to life. If we are still living in the law, letter and flesh we will have merely changed locations. We might sit on bean-bags and take a look at Romans but our efforts will remain a form of godliness without power because we remain IN THE FLESH.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty and the life of God manifests in men and women. Life is there because people live a resurrected life in Jesus. They have the joy of a resurrected life because in Jesus they have been put to death. A real transaction and transformation has taken place. They are not just bleating about being born again like so many christian sheep [sic]. The power of the resurrected Jesus is alive in them. The flesh is driven out. The Spirit reigns and they live out the person of Jesus in their group life rather than living jerky and stilted strictures that are the new form of the letter.
‘Operate in the flesh and we plant weeds. Live in the Spirit and we plant sons and daughters of God.’
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
The faith that makes people daughters and sons of God does not come from mere evidence or even industrious Bible study. It comes from revelation and revelation starts in the heart. Tozer asserts that those who walk in the light of God do so because for them believing is seeing. This is the believing that occurs because a man or a woman has given their heart unconditionally to Jesus and as a result becomes privy to the only light that is light. It is the believing that occurs, as Tozer says, because ‘One has committed their total being to Christ.’ Is this your life?
Our being enclosed in God’s being is what produces liberty and light. This is the light that Adam was meant to have and what Christ has returned to human beings. We were designed to live in God and see in God.
In Christ we are once again placed in the Father. By the Holy Spirit this union is made a reality as our spirit is not only joined to God. We are surrounded by Him and by the One Spirit we become sons, which equips us with the authority and power the sons of God are called to wield in Christ.
SPIRIT OF SONSHIP
The authority of God does not rest on the anointing but on Christ. Our ability to administer this authority depends not on the anointing but on whether we are in Christ. Strictly speaking, life in the Spirit is much more than being Spirit-filled and operating in the gifts. Life in the Spirit is a life in the Father brought about because Jesus is our life. Life in the Spirit is actually the Spirit of Sonship manifest in us courtesy of the One Spirit who draws all into the embrace of the Father.
This explains why there are many who have the gifts of the Spirit, yet remain equipped with bread-knives rather than swords. Their authority over circumstances and the Enemy is small. Discernment is absent. Their personal lives suffer from serial disaster. They have the ability to judge but not to love and through them, the Kingdom of God is denied.
The unfortunate truth for many good-living and Spirit-filled Christians is that they have never been born again. They have assented to the construct but it has not taken hold of their being or taken over their heart. They are living in either the law or trying to meet the demands of church culture.
‘A key marker of the Kingdom of God is discernment. Discernment is more than a gift. It results from being formed and built up in Christ. Discernment is the mind of Christ in you’
Light in the Spirit is Christ from first to last. Life in the Spirit is Christ in you and Christ manifest in the world as you. In Christ’s light we see light. But should we live in law, performance and religion we will not know Christ or see Him as He is. We will make him in our image rather than being re-made in His. We will be unable to multiply His power in any meaningful way. Our eyes will be veiled as will the potential of our lives. Only in Christ is the veil taken away. Only in Christ are we born again and only in Christ can we see the Kingdom of God.
‘But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away’ 2 Cor 3.14 NIV.
‘In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again’ John 3.3 NIV.
Monday, November 21, 2011
There is no higher honour than the call of Christ to follow Him and minister in His Name. Yet this call is not so honoured among men or even among Christians. For those in whom Jesus lives with power and authority their daily work is an opportunity for the life of God to flow through them to water dry places, thirsty souls and stumbling sojourners. Through them flows Jesus, to heal and restore the lives of men and women
.
The call to minister in Jesus name is valued by those in whom Jesus lives. Such people live heart to heart with Jesus because He is their life. They genuinely are a living sacrifice because their life is not their own. Yet since they acknowledge that they are bought with an infinite price they value themselves as sons and daughters of God. They rejoice in the privilege of being a co-workers with His Son. In being a living sacrifice they are found in Him. They gain themselves. Not their carnal selves that have been put to death but their real selves as defined by the Father. They have become sons. They are who they are. They have an identity that does not depend on position, accomplishment, the clothes they are wearing or the numbers of people they have managed to assemble about them. They live in God and living in I AM they know who they are.
Living in Christ such people are able to lead others to find ‘good pasture.’ Such pastures are not methods or the much vaunted ‘keys’ that some tend to market. But they can be sound teaching and the over-turning of false doctrine. These pastures are always Christ and the revelation of His beauty and His infinite and everlasting life for all who believe.
There are Christians, who see no reason to honour those who take up their cross and follow Jesus, because they have never taken up His cross. They secretly despise those who do, regarding themselves as more practical and worldly-wise than those whose cause is Jesus. Sadly this attitude can also be held by those who have adopted ministry as a profession. They have learned ‘the system’ and this is where they have cast their lot.
True, these ‘believers’ have adopted His name and the life-style generally known as Christian. They live respectable lives and provide for their families in a creditable manner. (Providing for one’s family is indeed commendable but an atheist can do the same). The focus and course of their life is identical to those who have no belief in Jesus. Their identity is found in what they do. It is earned by strenuous effort. Their security, such as it is, has been forged as an actor in the political economy. Not that there is anything wrong with hard work and vocational success.
The point is that their security has nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with the kingdoms of this world. They appear as upright citizens, yet none of them represent the Kingdom of Heaven. They have woven for themselves garments of self-respect but in their heart they honour themselves. They do not honour those who have taken up the cross to follow Jesus. Yet they do have a purpose in a round about way. They form the cross that followers of Jesus take up and are called to bear.
Whether such believers will get to heaven, I cannot say. But what I do know is that they do not bring heaven to earth. The beauty of the fellowship of the cross is that you get to be a companion of Jesus, sharing His heart and the mind of God. Truly it can be said of you that with Jesus, you are instrumental in causing His Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
‘But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead’ Phil 3. 7-11 NIV.
Saturday, November 18, 2011
This is the story of Evelyn Pertwee. Evelyn was a good woman. She cared about other people and hoped to make their lives better by being equipped with skills from some courses she had done.
But Evelyn had been raised in a form of Christianity that was not only legalistic. It had embraced the view that the Kingdom of God could be enlarged by right action, right belief and right formula. Evelyn had been bathed in a religion of works and a philosophy of works since birth. For her, religion was something you did. So as well as being ‘religious,’ humanism was also a temptation and diversion for Evelyn.
Evelyn’s religion was one of formulae, formulations and concerted effort. She became more attached to method and formulae as a result of a course she did that steeped here in humanism and its man-centered orientation. Thus while Evelyn set out to help people, her effort to better their lives was blunted because man and not God was at the center of her universe. Her attraction to ‘methods’ meant she was tied to man. Being tied to man Evelyn lived from the earth. Evelyn could offer tolerable recovery but never transformation. Offering freedom to others, she was herself most bound.
In her mind, Jesus existed for Evelyn to help her do the things she should do and be a conscience for her when she did not do them. Evelyn had a version of Jesus. But he was a jesus [sic] that she felt she had to pay off for the salvation he had won her. For Evelyn charity for others was never far from paying off her debt to Jesus.
‘Evelyn’s jesus [sic] defined her as a worker rather than a daughter.’
Now and again Evelyn would give the appearance of climbing out of the trough of performance addiction in which she lived. She would attend a conference where she got access to revelation by the Holy Spirit. She would come home and press into this truth. It would get her half out of the mud-pit, with one leg over the bank. But then she would topple back. She did not mind it in the mud. The truth was she gained a certain security and comfort in her earthen trench of letter and flesh. In the flesh she felt she was in control. But in spite of this there was a holy frustration and a Godly ache. Her mode of being never provided her with the means of being who she wanted to be.
Evelyn lived in the flesh not as an immoral person but as one who lived way below the potential of who she could be as a ‘Son of God.’ She found it hard to hear from God, usually went ahead of Him and continually followed leaders whose worked in the flesh and not the Spirit of Christ.
As intimated above, Evelyn had been brought up with the belief that a human is essentially a mind and a body that does ‘God things.’ In other words persons are advanced creatures who attempt to follow God through right ideas and right actions. But genuine spirituality is the result of the union of the spirit of a person with the Spirit of God. It is God’s heart and our heart joined. We were made to live in God by being one with God. Paradoxically only in union with God can we be ourselves. Evelyn often talked about this but never lived it. She often remarked, ‘Don’t we already know that,’ or ‘Aren’t we already doing that?!’
But it was clear to those who knew Evelyn that her heart and her being did not know it and that Evelyn and those like her could only become what they aspired to once they moved from ‘doing’ to ‘being.’
The reason was that “Self” was Evelyn’s thief. It was her chief obstacle to growth. Evelyn had also absorbed the idea; an idea that is core to the ‘us centered universe’ and the realm that many Christians live in, that God is here to help us have our way. But the opposite is the case. Jesus came to do His Father’s will. Not His own. We are here to see that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Not to make a heaven out of seeing our will done. We are not the center even of our universe. God is. Until we understand this with our heart we cannot multiply His will into our situations.
The tragedy for Evelyn is that at the center of her being – what we usually call the heart – it is Evelyn who is center stage. Not Jesus. This is tragic for Evelyn because she cannot be who Jesus means her to be and she cannot minister in the authority and power of Jesus. Evelyn is frustrated, yet walks on a tread-mill of works. Evelyn works hard but her projects do not bear fruit.
Under the knowledge of good and evil man holds center stage. But with a life in Jesus, God does. When Jesus is our life, God is God. But when He really is Lord we are sons. Paradoxically it is now that we have the authority of God to act in His Name. We must die to self and be reborn to achieve this. Many Christians like Evelyn talk about being born again without it ever having happened to them. They are attempting to live out of self on behalf of God.
Evelyn Pertwee has been living in the perverse tree. But she can find life in the tree of life which is the Branch and the living presence of Christ in us. There is hope for Evelyn if she agrees with the Father and lives the Galatians 2.20 life. God has already put us to death and raised us to life in Jesus. Repenting is ceasing to live in us, and beginning to live in Jesus. Godliness is the process of growing as a Son into the fullness of Christ.
It’s interesting that there is only a one-letter difference between sin and son and lie and life. It’s the difference between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. It’s the difference between multiplying iniquity and advancing the new creation.
We need to agree with the Father and take a grip on our inheritance. We are crucified in Christ, yet we are alive and fruitful because Christ lives in us to multiply His life. His life multiplied through His people is the new creation and the Kingdom of God.
Keith Allen, November, 2011
Friday, November 17, 2011
Thousands of Christians have never lived in the fullness of what Jesus has done. They think He came to legitimate and re-authorize the Old Testament way in the New Testament age. Jesus came to establish a New and Living Way: Himself. He is the Way because He is your life.
God has an order in the Spirit that holds the universe and the world in place. He is that order; the order that He manifests in the Person of Jesus His Son who is the exact representation of the Father’s being. Common science would tell us that the universe is material, impersonal and cruel. But the Father through His Son assures us that the universe is personal, spiritual and loving. It finds its being in the law of the Spirit of life that is not a ‘what’ but a ‘who.’ Love is Jesus and Jesus is God.
Well is that cool or what? Jesus is the law of the Spirit of life. In Him the earth and all its creatures find their being and purpose. In Jesus they are loved. To be loved is to be LIFED!
Jesus is not only the exact representation of the Father. He is the exact representation of a human being. He is I AM as God and I am as man. Since it was Jesus who created the universe and Jesus who bought back the earth with His life, it is Jesus who is the interpreter of History. Jesus is the Lens that interprets the New Testament and the lens through which the types and symbols of the Old Testament find their fullness. The key hermeneutic of Bible study is that the Old Testament points to the New. But the New Testament does not point to the Old. The Old Testament is the shadow. The reality is Christ.
‘In Jesus you are real. In anything else you are less than you are.’
There are figures, analogies and prophecies in the Old Testament. These things pointed to the New Testament and heralded Christ’s coming and the appearance of the Kingdom. They were shadows and snippets of the reality to come. But they were not the reality. In the Old Testament there is no light or lens through which we are able to interpret the meaning of life or what the New Testament means for us. Jesus is that light. The light came into the world when Jesus came into the world. Jesus is the light of the world and the light that reveals the meaning of the past, present and future.
‘When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’ John 8.12 NIV.
Jesus is the revelation of God. In Jesus we see light and know what light is. The knowledge of good and evil is darkness and confusion. Take care what you live in.
When Jesus is our life we live in the light and cannot live in confusion or darkness. In all things Jesus is the Lens. The reality is Christ, which means that all things find their nature and purpose in relation to Him.
The New Testament is the consequence of the Father’s accomplishments in His Son. Jesus changed existence. He moved man from a life lived in the Knowledge of good and evil to a life lived in God. Today’s life, current circumstances and future events must be viewed through the lens of Jesus. In Him we personally and the world live, move and have our being – not in the Torah, not in temple services, not the Sabbath, not Israel, not in rites and programs but in Jesus.
‘What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ’ Phil 3.8 NIV.
Jesus is the life of the world, literally, because God so loved the world. God’s mysterious plan is not some ingenious resurrection of the Old Testament realized through Christ. His plan is Christ in you, Christ incarnated as you personally and collectively. Christ manifesting Himself in the peoples of the world is the Kingdom of God. All things will be brought together in Christ and in no lesser thing. Compared to this Reality all else is nonsense and rubbish.
‘The Kingdom of God is not diets and days, holy places or holy lands. It is the union of the spirit of man with the Spirit of God in Jesus Christ.’
‘For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him’ Col 1.16 NIV.
‘For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen’ Rom 11. 36 NIV.
Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live’ 1 Cor 8.6 NIV.
‘And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross’ Col 1.20 NIV.
Thursday, November 16, 2011
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy has much to tell us about the spiritual realities of this present season, since it is a metaphor of the battle between Christ and Satan. We don’t have to look far to see the latent similarities emerging from the story.
Sauron (Satan) was defeated at the cross. Yet he continues to live because the people of the world, including many Christians, cling to the considerable carnal power of the one ring. Hoping to reign with its power, the one ring continues to rule them all. ‘All’ means much of the Christian church, including those who retain the knowledge of good and evil for their strength. The most pitiful spectacle today occurs because multitudes strive to overturn the power of the rings by the power of the ring!
The issue before us today is this: Will we continue in the power of the ring or will we abandon the flesh to live in the spirit of Christ and so cast the ring into the fires of Mt Doom?
The New Testament Age was meant to be the age of Christ in you; the age when the incarnate Jesus became the life of individuals and whole civilizations. Yet much of Christ’s victory was dissipated. Much of Christianity is weak, confused and dominated by the Evil One. The reason: People continue to live in themselves. They remain in the power of the ring. The church lives in itself. But Jesus came so that we could cease living in self and live in God.
In Tolkien the power of the ‘One Ring’ was broken centuries before Frodo and Sam cast it into the fires of Mount Doom. Isildur had slain the dark Lord Sauron and taken possession of the Ring. But the ring and its promise of power took possession of Isildur. It does give power – of sorts. The ring has power that C.S Lewis called ‘that hideous strength.’ Yet it can mask itself in piety and good works. It masks itself in self-promotion for the cause of Christ. The power of the ring is always insidious and always self-destructive.
Isildur would not die to self or the power of the ring that tempted him. He refused to destroy it and so the ring began to destroy. The ring disappeared from the consciousness of men. But it did not lie lost and dormant. It was waiting to be found. At times the ring “to rule them all” was in the hands of the degenerate Gollum who is a figure of degenerate man. The ring extended his life even as it depraved him. Gollum can be a figure of he who lives from lust and the pride of life. Gollum can also represent the actual appearance of one whose life in religion causes him to be smug about his achievements and standing.
At other times the ring found itself in more benign and innocent hands such as one Bilbo Baggins. Later by the hand of providence it came into the possession of Frodo Baggins. The Fellowship of the Ring accepted the task of casting it into the fires of Mt Doom.
As the ring remained at large in the earth, the spirit of Sauron increased in strength. The malignant forces of Mordor festered, reproduced and spread throughout the land. These forces and contagions of death spread wherever flesh finds itself sympathetic to the ring and wherever humans presume to be like gods outside of God. When Adam and Eve accepted the ring, they did not know that they would produce ‘gods’ of a monstrous kind.
Here is a symbol of the mystery of iniquity. The forces of degeneracy that could have been annihilated when the ring of power was cut from Sauron’s hand continued and multiplied, just like the power inherent in the knowledge of good and evil that had been extinguished at the cross. Jesus has annihilated it. But human beings clung to it, choosing to live in the flesh instead of the Spirit. Following the cross, the children of men preferred darkness to light. Those who walked in the light did so only for a time before reverting to the lying promises of the one ring: ‘You shall be as gods knowing good and evil.’
Yet at the same time a Greater Power was moving on the valiant and pure of heart to complete what had been established in the spirit centuries before: The re-birth of the dominion of men through participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Many live under the illusion that the good life consists of eschewing evil and embracing good. This is frequently mistaken for the good life and mistaken for godliness by many of God’s people. Too often what we understand as Christianity is a reductionist form of religion in which we imagine Jesus at hand to help us live the knowledge of good and evil with greater success. But this is life in Adam, not life in Jesus. With Jesus as our life, we are alive in God and dead to the ring.
This Christianized version of the knowledge of good and evil lives in the kingdoms of men, but never in the Kingdom of God. To live out the dominion of the sons of God we must live in God through Jesus Christ. In Christ all are made alive and in Christ all are delivered from the power of the ring.
Perverted life in the ring of power came to an end at the cross. All that remained for the children of men to do was to agree with what the Father had accomplished in Christ and live in Jesus. But Isildur prefers the enticements of the ring, as does the carnal Christian and the carnal church. The ring is precious to the flesh, appeals to its’ lust for power, certainty, the need to control and the desire to accumulate a status and identity for oneself. The ring can produce Orcs but never sons and daughters of God.
Quite unknown to the producers of the Lord of the Rings, there is much that is prophetic about this film. Increasingly God’s people understand that the Kingdom of God is Galatians 2.20. They are learning that pursuing good through the knowledge of good and evil (law) multiplies evil and is itself lawless and evil. Believers are being liberated from a life in self to a life in Jesus. Large numbers are learning to have Jesus as their life rather than themselves as their life. They are learning to cast the ring of power into the fires of Mt Doom. People are rising to the fullness of Christ because he becomes their life. Sons of God live in the Son of God who is incarnate in them and manifest as them.
Life in the knowledge of good and evil opened to man the hope of independence and power. Unknown to Adam and Eve it offered the possibility of living a feeble kind of good and an infinitely debased variety of evil. Not only would our good be insipid but our self centeredness would make it evil. The result was that we would call good evil and evil good.
The law of Moses, given in the context of the forbidden tree, spelt out what good was by comparison with evil. Even so it was far from the righteousness of God, being described as the law of sin and death. The righteousness of God is not a list of abstractions or a raft of opposites. It is the Person of God’s Son: God’s Son in you. To receive righteousness is to have Christ in us. To be righteous is to be a son of God.
The fruit of the forbidden tree (the power of the One Ring) dims the vision and dwarfs the being. It blinds us to the infinite nature of God’s ‘good’ and infatuates us with the importance of things our self-centered mind defines as good. This cripples us in spirit leaving us to fumble about seeking security man-made identities of self-importance.
Orcs might depict demons or the most wicked and debased of human beings. But even the ‘good guys’ in Lord of the Rings illustrate aspects of immaturity, folly and self-centeredness that were utilized by Sauron for His own purposes. None are free who have not died to self and none can see who are not alive in Jesus because He is their life.
‘For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive’ 1 Cor 15.22 NIV.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
HOW OLD IS YOUR TRUCK?
Humility gives us freedom to be ourselves. When we are not absorbed in protecting our borders, our toes or identity we are free for our identity to shine forth undimmed by fleshly attempts to insist on who we are. Our human attempts to maintain our identity in the face of others produces in us a spirit of control that dims who others really are and prevents us having the freedom to minister in the fullness of the Person Jesus has redeemed us to be.
Humility is a most desirable quality. It attracts others to us and makes them feel safe in our presence. From time to time Jesus permits our personal vanity to be revealed to us. When we get a window on our pride we can ask Jesus for more humility. But we have access to something more powerful than this. We can ask Jesus to live in us more fully; to be our life more completely and impart to us all that He is.
The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor in spirit. The pure in heart will see God and the meek will inherit the earth. Here we see that in the rapidly emerging Kingdom of Heaven on earth the humble have proprietary rights. As compared to those who insist on their rights and who are working hard in roles in which they have appointed themselves, the poor in spirit possess the authority of heaven to release it on earth in the places Jesus designates. The pure in heart have allowed Jesus to strip us of all that is self-centered and self-promoting so that the result of their plans and efforts is Christ’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven.
The humble get to inherit ever more of the earth because Christ is their life and His rule is extended through them. This does not happen by control, domination or force. It happens because people respond to the Christ who lives in them and reveals Himself in their words and ways. Such authority is given because it is not insisted on or demanded. It just is. This is the same authority exercised by Jesus – the authority that is not as the scribes, teachers of the law and multipliers of method and formulae.
Humility enables us to repent of the flesh and walk as sons in the Spirit. Humility enables us to see that we were wrong and quickly change course to walk in paths that are both ancient and new. New, because Jesus is revealing them again today as His new and living way. Old, because we were made to live in God and not in ourselves individually or collectively.
There are forms of pride that are subtle and which extend like a rock-strata throughout the depths of our being. They rust us on to, what for us are non-negotiable attachments to denominational identities and the false doctrine that goes with them. We are speaking of strongholds that the Enemy uses to bind us.
I saw a picture of a group of people walking in spiritual gifts, but not unfortunately in the Spirit. They appeared as a late 1940s truck that had been re-painted a dull iridescent green and red. The old truck represents an Old Covenant mind-set. The old truck indicates that nothing has really changed and the people are living in a superseded reality.
The paint is the surface alteration and appearance given by the pursuit of spiritual gifts. The dull iridescence is the muted power and dimmed authority available in this hybrid of spiritual gifts and Old-Covenant mind-set. The truck is worn out and struggling because it is not up to the task. It is under a curse. But not because the Lord has withered it with a blast of rebuke. The truck lacks authority and power because it is outside the veil and separated from the place it belongs – parked in heavenly places in the Presence of God.
Humility is the gift of agreeing with God rather than being tied to pet notions and false identities. The sons of God live in God’s Son. Their security and identity is that they are His and He lives in them. Jesus is their life. It is His life in them that is manifest as the Kingdom of God in the world.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
On Facebook someone wished a friend a “Happy Sabbath” and a “Sabbath Blessing.” To such people I would wish them, not only a “Happy Sabbath” but a happy Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I would wish them God’s favour and life-giving presence on a happy week and a happy life.
‘Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me’ John 6.57 NIV.
Further, I would wish them completeness in Jesus and sufficient liberation from materialism and performance orientation to enjoy a peaceful and complete life so they would not have to struggle to the end of the week and gasp, ‘Thank God for the Sabbath!’ I would hope that they could rejoice and say, ‘Thank God for Jesus’ life in my life. Thank you Father than I live in your love as a son. Glory to you Holy Spirit that through you, Jesus is my companion, my day, my week and my life.
We can of course be having a beneficial and even a ‘good’ life when we are not happy. Joy is better than happiness since it depends on our state of mind and not on our circumstances. Better to be in Christ on our cross rather than in ourselves at the beach.
‘Since we have been gifted with union with God and God lives in us, God is where we are.’
Contentment can be present in challenge, difficulty and even pain when we are in God and He is in us. Not only does He have the power to make evil work for out good, but when the worst comes to the worst we are still in a place of companionship and safety.
‘When calamity comes, the wicked are brought down, but even in death the righteous have a refuge’ Prove 14. 32 NIV.
In death we are not extinguished and hope is still there. What does this tell us about the wounds and min-deaths our souls experience as we travel through life? What does this tell is about the fatigue that results from living in our life rather than in His? It tells us that by His wounds we are healed and it tells us that in His life we have life.
Jesus the Person is Lord. He is our resurrection and life today. By living in Him we are joined to the power that raised Jesus from the dead. In Jesus we are continually renewed and refreshed. Jesus is life and that life is the life of those who live in Him.
We find peace, contentment, joy and satisfaction to the extent that we are ourselves, living out who God made us to be. This is what it means to have our being and our life in Jesus. We live in this state to the extent that Jesus and not lesser things are our life. In Him we live, move, have our being and experience our peace and rest.
I wish you Jesus. I declare to you His life. I bless you with contentment, fruitfulness and deep peace because Jesus is your life. May His living water quench your thirst and irrigate the lives of others.
‘In him was life, and that life was the light of men’ John 1.4 NIV.
‘Do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day’ Col 2.16.
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Kingdom of God is not God’s reviving breath on dead stumps and vested interests. Neither is it the empowering the Christian industry with a more lively mechanics. Jesus is not legitimating hierarchical structures with His power. Jesus is simply the life and the light of those who live in Him. As Jesus becomes the life of individuals and communities they will be His Body and His church. As people live in Jesus He appoints and confirms His leadership with an authority that comes from heaven but which is recognized on earth.
Jesus is building and establishing His church so that it expresses His heart and His will and so that people will know that God is love and has power to liberate people from fatalism, despair, poverty and violence. His purpose is not to lighten the load of pastors. His purpose is to fill those pastors who are His not with talk but with power. His plan is also to establish those whom He has appointed as pastors rather than those who appointed themselves.
People can appoint themselves to positions in institutional church and in simple church. They do this from mistaken zeal and because they walk in a mixture of flesh and spirit. The cause of this is esteeming religious things above union with God. It’s the pure in heart who see God. Groups can start under the supervision of a debilitating mixture because what is planted is not Jesus but the latest ‘letter bound’ formulation of religion. Plant Jesus, not weeds.
‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6 NIV.
Jesus employs and authenticates those who are His. No matter what walk of life or position people have held, Jesus can position and empower them to minister if He is their life rather than some mixture of Jesus with religion or humanism. ‘Mixture’ is the adulteration that denies the flow of His Presence and revelation.
‘Take care not to teach the gifts of the Spirit in the spirit of the letter. Don’t market the letter in the name of the Holy Spirit.’
Jesus established Saul of Tarsus as Paul the apostle even though he had bound people in the name of institutionalism and the law. For Paul Jesus was everything because He is. Jesus established fishermen and tax collectors in ministry because they had learned to make Him their life in order to set people free.
There are prophets who have a habit of endorsing people like themselves. Be careful about receiving prophecy that is rooted in a political perspective, or in a paradigm that is passing away or that is overly influenced by celebrity and the over confidence that comes from accumulated influence and acclaim. Ask yourself if you are churning around and around like clothes in a front loader because you sit at the feet of itinerant speakers but neglect to sit at the feet of Jesus. Jesus is coming in the flesh of His people to establish His own Kingdom, not someone else’s.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Over ten years ago Jesus gave me a dream in which I saw myself ministering via the internet to a sick church represented by a pale woman lying in a hospital bed with all sorts of tubes going into her body. The tubes represented all those sustenances that are not Jesus.
Stepping out into the hospital corridor I was almost knocked over by a garrulous rabble rushing down the hall with no time or intention to listen. They were completely absorbed in their babble. Well not all were so immersed. One stopped to talk and listen to what I had to say.
There are those who represent Jesus and many who represent mere religion.
If you represent Jesus, you do so because He is your life. He is not one you are using to achieve some end of your own. If you are such a person, you will identify with this experience of the rabble who neither see nor hear. Jesus has come in the flesh (the being) of those who desire Him. His paths are being made straight and His Kingdom is expanding. He is appealing to the deaf, the blind and the mindless rabble to come to Him and have life.
‘Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare’ Isa 55.2 NIV.
The Kingdom of God is beginning to become a reality on earth. This Kingdom is so subtle yet powerful that it is easy to miss. Who would have guessed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah or the One by whom the worlds were made? Who could have known, other than the discerning and those with a hunger for God, that God had come among people and manifested Himself in the person of Joseph and Mary’s Son?
Who knows today that Jesus is come in the flesh of Forerunners and men and women with a passion for Jesus, who live each day in the reality that it is Jesus who is their life?
So is it Jesus, or some religious junk food that is your life?
Who knows among those who live in the coma that we call ‘Christianity’ that Christ has come to earth in the persons of those who believe; who live in the Spirit as sons and daughters of God and are so one with Jesus that they are His Bride, and their flesh bares fruit to Him.
Ron McGatlin writes, ‘The spiritual nation of the Kingdom of God is exploding into fullness and the world, including much of the church does not even know it.’
The question is, ‘Do you know it?’
In His Kingdom we do what we were created and redeemed to do. Living from who we are. Living not from ego driven assumptions or from the captivity of the false identities clapped onto us by those who do not behold the face of Jesus. We minister from our true identity and our true place in Jesus and in the community of the saints. We are exactly where He means us to be and we are doing exactly what He intends for us to be doing.
We are not attempting to be a Watchman on the wall when God has not given us discernment. We are not attempting to pastor people when God has not gifted us with empathy, sensitivity and the ability to lead people to pasture. We are living in Christ and hence living in our genuine identity and purpose as revealed by the Spirit.
The beauty of life in the Spirit, as daughters and sons, as ambassadors of the Kingdom, as colleagues of our Lord – is that we get to be doing what we were created to do. We produce much fruit and get a blast doing it.
Ron McGatlin writes, ‘Elders in the army of God are being trained to fully flow the kingdom authority that is flowing by the Spirit from the throne of God. We are being trained to not overstep our given or assigned sphere of service into adjacent areas or spheres that are not assigned to us. God’s continuous spiritual communication lines must be fully connected into our spirits.’
Friday, November 11, 2011
It’s a scandal how the religious spirit is not perceived and how the anti-christ disguises himself in christianity [sic].
It’s amazing how many can have faith in faith without ever being intimate with God. It’s surprising how many have this routine called ‘church’ without ever experiencing the Presence of God. It’s amazing how many teach children about the mighty miracles of God without ever expecting to encounter the power of God – at least not in their church.
It’s puzzling that so many go to churches where God is not present. They think He is of course, but only because they have never experienced a gathering were God’s Presence is palpable. It’s astonishing in these times. Astonishing that when many are so enthused with new forms of church that they are not dismayed by the fact that their new house church; the church that meets regularly and sits on been bags to ‘look at Romans’ is just as lacking in the authority and power of the risen Christ, as the large institutional church that they left.
Why do people plant weeds in the name of God?
While I value the emergence of the Simple Church we need to be aware that there are non-house churches where Jesus is treasured and worshiped as the Wonderful One He is. Jesus’ presence is real in such churches with signs, healing and liberation from demons. I am amazed that people can become so ideological and legalistic about the configuration of a church that they miss the point that it is Christ’s manifest presence that fills anything with light and life. Sadly there are people who energetically plant simple churches that are just as bereft of the power and presence of Jesus as the one they left behind.
‘For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power’ 1 Cor 4.20 NIV.
On today’s Facebook, Bill Johnson writes, ‘I pay no attention to the warnings of possible excess from those who are satisfied with lack.’ He’s talking about the lack of the presence of the living Christ and the authority and healing power that goes along with it.
This prompted me to reply, ‘It is amazing how well esteemed lack is.’ I’m talking of the lack of God’s Presence and the preoccupation with our own. How is it that people can go to church each week, sit in rows, hear stories of God’s power, engage in Bible study and not know that they are they are purveying LACK?
How is that people can be so absorbed in church that they do not seem to know that the Kingdom of God is about the power that turns back evil with the finger of God?
‘My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power’ 1 Cor 2.4 NIV.
How can people live in this effete shadow of where God could and should be BUT IS NOT? They have been robbed. They have been blinded. They have been paralyzed by the religious spirit that wages relentless war against the fullness of Christ in His people. The very people who do not believe in the influence and presence of demons are the same people who have been neutralized by the spirit of anti-Christ. Sad, is it not, that it is the blind who have always claimed they can see!
The anti-christ is perfectly happy to have people absorbed in new forms of church, as long as the risen Christ does not multiply Himself and His power in and around them.
‘Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist’ John 1.7 NIV.
‘Plant church and church is what you will reap. Plant Jesus and the Kingdom of God will flower.’
It is easy to tell when the risen Christ rather than just a new form of religion is present. In an email from Reinhard Bonnke this morning I read, ‘Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke preached a red-hot Gospel message tonight and many thousands were saved saying, “Yes” to Jesus. Then Jesus touched and miraculously healed many sick and suffering people including a man whose arm was paralyzed since 2005, a man deaf in his right ear for 30-years, a woman who was crippled for 2 years and many others. We are rejoicing!
On Facebook last night a friend wrote,
‘Its not just the big things that God likes to heal. I went over to a friends place to find she had congested, achy sinus. The day before I woke up with exactly the same feeling but decided I didn't want to get the flu so commanded it to leave my body. God caught my words and made it happen so within five minutes my symptoms had completely gone!
So I came to my friend armed with this testimony, shared it and asked if she'd like prayer. I placed my hands across her cheeks and asked God to heal her. Her eyes grew very big as she padded her face trying to find the squishy parts, all completely gone across her cheeks. One more prayer and the congestion across her nose was instantly healed! God is so wonderful. He makes my day over and over again!’
Thursday, November 10, 2011
We are designed to live from heaven into earth. At creation the Father breathed Himself into Adam and he became a living being. Before His ascension Jesus breathed on the disciples and in doing so breathed on all who believe. He re-breathed into us the life of heaven.
Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit’” John 20.21-23 NIV.
We have been re-born to live by the Spirit in our physical bodies. This is another way of saying that we have been born again to live from heaven to earth. This is the meaning of ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.’ His will is done as the Spirit of Christ lives through His disciples on earth.
To live from earth to earth is to live in the flesh. To live from earth towards heaven is also to live in the flesh. To fast occasionally has some advantages, but to live a fasted life is to create heaven on earth. A fasted life is a life lived in Jesus’ life and not in our own.
The flesh can mean living a carnal life of greed and sexual immorality. Not so well known is the fact that a carnal life can also mean living out of our life. Our life is filled with things that are neither good nor evil like our jobs, vehicles, education, house duties, children and many more things. They can be the fabric of our life. But the Father’s will is that Jesus is the fabric of our life and that we live out of His life INTO OUR LIFE. This is what it means to live a fasted life.
The flesh can also be a well-respected religious life. Here is a life that is attuned to our labors to be like God. As holy as it appears it is essentially self-centered and carnal. Such a life is the habitation of the religious spirit who binds us while filling us with conceit. Here the flesh is very much alive because it has never been crucified. The cross has been discussed but self has never been nailed to it and put to death. Not because the person is overly selfish but because the person does not live Galatians 2.20. But the Father calls us to be crucified in His Son that we can be alive from the life of His Son in us.
‘A ‘good’ religious life is banal beside a life in Christ.’
The unfortunate result of a flesh driven life is that we cannot live as who we are: Sons and daughters of God who are the outshining of the Father’s glory. We are unable to live in the authority that is ours to exercise dominion over circumstance and the Enemy. Worst of all we remain curled-up beings; shriveled extensions of the tree of knowledge, centered on self and unable to love in anything more than a superficial sense. And every thing we put our hand to fades.
We need liberating from this body of death by agreeing with Jesus that we are dead and raised to our life in the Spirit in Him.
‘May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’ Gal 6.14 NIV.
‘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’ Romans 6.6 NLT.
‘I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms’ Eph 1.18-20 NIV.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Are we Believers the problem? Have we not been equipped with all we need to multiply the Kingdom of God on earth?
‘Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ Matt 6.10 NIV.
I came slowly into the Spirit. The door to life in the Spirit opened to me, when as a result of traumatic events in my life, I found that I had been attached to religion, but not joined to Jesus. From that point onwards I resolved to know Jesus and have as much of Him as I could, no matter what the cost.
The door of the Kingdom of Heaven opened to me because Jesus said, ‘I set before you an open door that no man can shut.’ Jesus is that door. When Jesus becomes our Lord the possibilities to know Him and multiply what He began are endless.
I’ve written recently that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. He is life. The book of Colossians declares that all things find their life and essence in Jesus. As God’s people learn to live in Jesus rather than in themselves, their preoccupations and their own lives, they will increasingly walk in the authority that Jesus intends all His disciples to walk in: The authority of the sons of God who are His witnesses on earth.
‘Life in the Spirit is not the gifts of the Spirit added to our old-covenant oriented life. Life in the Spirit is a spiritual union with Jesus that is manifest in us with authority in the world.’
By living in Jesus we have authority, but not as the scribes and proponents of religion. The life and power of Jesus is in Himself, in those in whom He lives and not in those who use His Name but scarcely acknowledge the reality of His Person.
Increasingly among people whose life is Jesus, His healing and resurrection power are being realized as they step out in faith. Approximately every ten days a friend of mine reports how the Lord used her to heal some condition in a persons she has come across in her daily activities. I have another friend in New Zealand whom the Lord uses to heal people every week. This morning on facebook I was given access to a link in which 16 Brazilians were raised from the dead!
Jesus has healed people through me and my friends - lots of them in India. My heart breaks because I do not see the same thing in Australia. Sure, some healings but not to the same extent. I can’t help wondering if in Australia, where we live in the Western-materialist mind-set, that we Believers are the problem. We believe in God but a god without arms and legs. We say we believe in the Bible but leave out anything to do with signs, miracles and casting out demons. Even the non-believers in India come up to you with the expectation that God has the power to do what they are requesting. And He does.
Perhaps we could think about worshiping the God who is real rather than absorbing ourselves in the weekly pursuit the god who is a projection of ourselves.
‘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.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
What are you planting? Is it Jesus, Bathurst Burrs or Serrated Tussock? China has endured some catastrophic earthquakes in recent years. In some places the people have been outraged because schools have collapsed killing hundreds of children. They collapsed because they had been built out of shoddy materials. Is our foundation Jesus or is it wood, straw and trinkets?
A shaking time has begun in which that which has not been built on God is collapsing and that which finds its life in Christ is becoming established. From now on in the church that which has not been built on Jesus will shudder, tremble and fall down in a pile of dust and human anguish. That which is of God will rise and grow like a living vine from the rubble with great joy. This will occur whether or not we live out of something new or something old. If we have not planted Jesus it will be pulled out.
‘Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn’ Matt 10.30 NIV.
Where we are positioned in the coming days will determine if we perish or flourish. Should we live in God and drive our roots deeply into Him we will participate in His Kingdom that fills the whole earth with its’ glory. Should we have ears that do not hear and eyes that do not see we will find our spiritual lives in jeopardy.
Speaking of Abraham, God says through Paul, ‘He was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God’ Hebrews 11.10 NIV.
God’s people build on Jesus. The church that results is the manifestation of Jesus in them by the Holy Spirit. This church is called the House of God, the sons of God and the Bride of Christ. ‘Sons’ connotes authority and power over circumstances and the Enemy. The Bride signifies union, intimacy and fertility. These qualities are the reality of those whose foundation is Jesus because the Son of God is incarnate in the sons of God. Here you are the multiplication of Jesus in the world.
What are you planting? Do you plant God-empty boxes or do you plant Jesus with His living Presence, authority and power?
Unfortunately one does not have to read far in the literature on church growth and simple church to find that in many cases the hope of the church is the church - the church in a new format: The church in café, in the house or on bean bags. But not, unfortunately, on Christ or the manifestation of His Presence in us.
S. O. S. Help Lord! It’s the same old stuff! Sadly the stuff is too often a regurgitation of the same old, same old godliness without power. Too often Jesus is scarcely mentioned. ‘Oh that’s a given!’ it is exclaimed. ‘Given’ is correct. He’s been given away!
In some sectors, house church is an ideology rather than Christ in people. The words ‘Emerging Church’ have largely been hijacked to further careers and the interests of professional Christianity. The Lord calls those to whom this applies to repent. To stop marketing religion; to repent of pirating Kingdom treasure ships and begin to live in Him. He calls these people to forsake mixture and turn to a Galatians 2.20 life.
‘We can plant weeds and clothe people in wood and straw or we can plant Jesus and multiply sons of God.’
The New Jerusalem, the city of God. It is populated by those who live in Christ and who have made Jesus their life individually, collectively and socially. The foundation, the architect of their communities and builder of the Kingdom is Jesus manifest in their spirit and through their lives. He is the one who builds His church and His new creation without human hands BUT WITH HUMAN HEARTS. Thus the New Jerusalem is heaven manifest on earth in God’s people.
‘But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness’ Romans 8.10 NIV.
‘To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory’ Col 1.27 NIV.
Then the angel who was speaking to me left, and another angel came to meet him and said to him: “Run, tell that young man, ‘Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of men and livestock in it. And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will be its glory within’ Zech 2.3-5 NIV.
‘I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband’ Rev 21.2 NIV.
Monday, November 6, 2011
There’s nothing kind about not telling the truth or leaving people in the relative comfort of their bondage. It might be political to step daintily around someone’s false doctrine but it is not grace and truth simply because it’s not love.
Over ten years ago I was astonished when a fellow teacher attempted to affirm a struggling student by telling her that she was gifted and intelligent. She may have had talents in particular areas as we all do, but she did not have the intelligence that would bring her success in senior high school and entrance to a university. The girl was struggling because she was academically challenged. She was not gifted in this area and the teacher was misleading her.
I don’t know how the student responded but she had every right to wonder, if she was as intelligent as she has been told, why she struggled to comprehend what she heard and why she worked her butt off when it made no difference to her marks. She left sometime later. Probably because her heart knew that it was being lied to.
Don’t lie to people’s hearts in the name of God. Don’t mistake a political spirit for the Holy Spirit.
We can affirm people without mishandling the truth and we can be positive by offering them hope without illusions. Genuine affirmation is always cloaked in the Spirit of Christ because it is He who is resurrection and life. In Him we are loved and with Him there is always hope.
I read this in today’s Melbourne Age: ‘In 2009, the American journal Psychological Science published research undertaken by Joanne Wood, professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo. It found that repeating positive self-affirmations made people feel worse .. Another study found that high self-esteem correlates with traits such as egotism, narcissism and arrogance. Over-inflated self-esteem could lead to self-deception, intolerance and prejudice, not qualities generally associated with a valued and enriched life.’ Maybe you already suspected that this was so.
Thankfully the One who is God is also love and truth. Self-talk can delude us because it may not connect with who and what we actually are. It may not go very deep because it does not deal with the heart.
Affirmation and positive self-talk will not help us if we are wounded inside. It’s no help at all when our difficulty in coping is the result of the mortal wound we all carry – the wound that afflicts our heart as a result of our separation from the love of God. Neither does it help if it’s a way of avoiding the action that could be the solution to a continuing problem. We need to know that we are deeply loved at the foundation of our being. We need to know that there is One who can live in us to resurrect our lives. There is hope because we are deeply loved by the Father.
Nothing provides wholeness of life and fruitfulness of effort like a life lived with the Personal Jesus. By seeking His Face we come to know God. We also come to know ourselves and gain an accurate picture of who we are and what we are meant to be doing. I have worked with Christians with little knowledge of themselves and severe deception regarding their capabilities. I have seen others who have drained themselves of life by attempting to love themselves and gain the respect of others via conspicuous performance. This is the hazard of living in ‘Christianity’ without living in Jesus. There are forms of religion where jesus [sic] is not a savior but a task master.
There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. Neither are there lies and prevarication. We get grace and truth. And we get love. We get to be who we are.
The truth is that we are so bad that what should have happened to us occurred to Jesus at the cross. The grace is that we are resurrected with Jesus to live to the fullness of our potential. The cross declares that we are loved of God. The resurrection declares that there is new life in store. Pentecost ensures that Christ’s life is our life. Well is that good or what? Yes. It’s more that good. It’s God!
Saturday, November 6, 2011
The other day I read the following ‘word’ on FaceBook: ‘Son, you need to turn away from the idea that you can get what you need by listening to other people. I have what you need. They don't.’ He observed, ‘God is emphasizing that the day of leading people to follow me is over. Networks are so over. Book knowledge is behind us. It's about connecting people with God directly, and getting out of their way.’
God is His own mediator. Jesus Christ, the exact expression of the Father has joined us to God and more. He lives in us, imparts Himself to us and becomes us. Possession by the Spirit of Christ is quite different to being possessed by an idol or inhabited by an evil spirit. With Jesus incarnate we become more alive and more ourselves and more the recipient of unlimited growth. But idols and evils spirits leave us degraded.
‘It has been said that the Evil one eats his sons. But the Sons of God eat Jesus.’
God wants us to listen to His Son, draw life from Him and hear His Voice. When our heart desires, Jesus and is one with His heart we have chosen what is irreplaceable as the foundation of life – life in God. Any addition to life in Jesus is hay, wood, and the deceit of ‘precious jewels.’ Following some leader, relying on a network, attempting to draw life from books and the latest ideas are all forms of wood, hay and straw that place our connection with God in jeopardy, leaving us open to confusion and stagnation. ‘Jewels’ symbolize the more flashy aspects of Christianity – group dynamics, soulish excitement, self-centered praise and worship and the false security that can be had as a member of a ‘cutting edge church.
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If you have found a small group where the people have a hunger for Jesus, to know Him and uncover His glory, you are blessed indeed. The uncovering of Jesus’ majesty will result in the unveiling of the identity, purpose and true glory of those who bow at Jesus’ feet. You will find yourself eating the bread of life!
I believe you will make much greater advances growing into the fullness of Jesus here than in some ‘precious jewels’ church with its huffing and puffing layers of false mediators between you and God.
At the expense of His life, Jesus bought for you a place in heaven, direct communication with God, and union with God and the friendship of angels. Heaven has come to live in you and with you. Now the Spirit of God lives in you. How good is that? So why, if I may be so bold, are you attempting to draw life from hay, wood and false mediators? You are bought with the price of Jesus’ life. As a result you are gifted with the Presence of God in you. Live in what you have been given and cease attempting to get your life second or third hand.
Good books, anointed speakers, and networks have their place. There is nothing so pleasurable as a good author revealing the life and wisdom of God. Different writers and speakers present different dimensions of the Kingdom of God. But the sons of God do not live in them. Sons utilize the gifts of creation but they live in God because Jesus is their life. Listening to wise people is good. Hearing from God for yourself is better. This enables you to be who you are and take your place among those whom Jesus has liberated from their false-selves to become their genuine selves in Him. The pure in heart see God face to face. This is Jesus building His church.
Friday, November 4, 2011
A lot of healing occurred in a house church I attended last Sunday; healing of marriages, liberation from the demonic and healing of addictions. The sons and daughters of God are emerging here because Jesus is planted here.
‘Plant Jesus and we will grow the sons of God to reap the Kingdom of God. Plant anything else and we will reap weeds (tares).’
I came across another a house church the other day; a place where ‘ministry frequently occurs at the hand of dead men talking. I’m talking of those who live in the letter and the head. The first gathering rests on the foundation of Jesus. The second on an assortment of wood, straw and jewels.
Trees of life grow where Jesus is planted. Weeds and tares spring up when we plant religion. Religion is the attempt to replace the absence of God with ourselves. It is the the attempt to overcome death by shuffling about some new version of ourselves.
‘Some church plants are pathetic and an affront to the King and the Kingdom.’
Let’s be clear. There are some places where Jesus is present in fullness and others where He is scarcely there at all. We need to do more than get in house church, sit on been bags and take a look at Romans. We are alive and fruitful when we are living out Romans 8 and more – when Christ is our life.
I don’t wish to be unkind, but it is obvious that not Christ but ‘church’ is the life of some and as a result they plant weeds. Plant Jesus and you will always be ahead and the work of Satan will be defeated. Plant anything else and you will just perpetuate the knowledge of good and evil or what Jesus called INIQUITY (KJV).
Life in the Spirit of Christ is God’s Plan revealed. It is the point of the gospel. It is also the Kingdom of God. Jesus revealed Himself as the healing Presence in the house church above because IT’S ABOUT JESUS. A slogan used here is, ‘The sovereignty of Jesus in the power of the Spirit.’
‘Wherever Jesus is really present there is resurrection and life.’
A pervasive commodity with many of God’s people is religion reinventing itself as the house church. I’m enthusiastic about house church. I believe it is an advance with great potential. I attend one, so I’m not just theorizing. But I’m passionate about people joining themselves to Jesus rather than to institutions large or small. The Kingdom of God will never be produced by some novel configuration of church. But Jesus will build His church and His Kingdom out of those who live in union with Him. Satan’s Kingdom falls before those who are united in the reality that Jesus is the Christ, The Savior of the World.
This obsession with church is a curiosity. Lengthy essays are written and thousands of people embrace these writings as revelation for this hour. Maybe some of it is. There is some excellent information here. But some tomes are written entirely in the letter. ‘The letter’ we need to be reminded is that which kills. Utilized in the Spirit it can grow the church. But when applied as yet another form of the letter we perpetuate the death of the church and the mortal wound of the people.
There are churches that are dead even as they are planted. Others are alive with light and healing power because Christ and not some abstraction has been planted.
‘And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you’ Romans 8.11 NIV.
We don’t need God’s people to be moving from the institution of the church on the corner to the institution of church in a house. Let’s get focused, ‘Are words like, ‘I will build my church’ and ‘I will build a church without human hands’ so difficult to understand? Is it not plain that this kind of church is the outgrowth of hearts joined to Jesus and that this kind of church is more personal and more alive than any product of church growth theory? Is it not clear that God’s real church is the multiplication of Christ with all His power to defeat every work of the devil. Or will be settle for the multiplication of old, tired church in new forms even as we sit on been bags and take another look at Romans?
To think that a change of church style is a cure all is naïve. It’s like a paralyzed man who thinks his world will change because he brought a new pair of runners!
New configurations of church can no more generate Jesus than soil and straw can generate strawberries. You have to plant the strawberries. We must plant Jesus.
To produce sons and daughters of God we must plant Jesus.
There is one mediator between God and man and it’s not the church. It’s Jesus.
God in and among people is the church. God is His own mediator and Jesus is His Name. Jesus builds His church by joining people to Himself, then living His life through them. Our first priority is to lift Him up and worship Him as Lord.
The reigning Jesus draws all people to Himself and recreates them to be who they are. This is His church. They become one because they are one with God by the one Spirit.
Christ’s Body is people. They are part of Himself. Not people who are mere attendees. They are people in whom Jesus is incarnate by the Spirit. Incarnation means Christ in you, Christ as you, Christ as the church. When Jesus is our life, and not some, religious artifact or fashionable phraseology, our community life is the manifestation of Jesus in us. This is His Body and His Kingdom.
‘And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it’ Matt 16.18 NIV.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
I like useful things, especially gadgets that help me communicate and do my work. I like my four wheel drive and the extra height and view it affords. It can tow my caravan with ease. Elizabeth, Meredith and I like renovation shows because of the way old houses can be made new, comfortable and exciting. Things like this are good, but not to be lived from. Morality and ethics are good and useful too, but not to be lived from. We are made to live from God.
One of the most insidious fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the attempt to live from substitutes for God. People can do this by living from the building blocks that make up their religion. Many attempt to live from the things of Christ, yet have no real relationship with His Person. But the message of the New Testament is that we live in Jesus to impart new life to ourselves, families, work colleagues and nations. John captures this in this startling piece of revelation.
‘The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us’ John 1.2 NIV.
Jesus is The Life.
Jesus’ life expels all the forms of death. He multiplies love, forgiveness, grace, humility, wisdom and authority. Jesus authorizes you to be the person He created you to be. Only Jesus is life itself. Life is a Person. We have been redeemed to live in Jesus so that His life flows through us into the creation.
No ‘thing’ has the capacity to give us life. But by living in God we gain the capacity to impart life to things. Jesus’ life is eternal and infinite. This life holds the universe in place. It is the power that resurrected Jesus. Don’t be superstitious. Don’t fall for Christian magic and beware of ‘keys’ that are supposed to unlock hidden treasures. There’s One Source of life and this is God’s son Jesus who lives in you to fill you with His life.
In the New Testament life is a sacrament because life is a Person.
‘He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life’1 John 5.12 NIV.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
How do we know God? Unless we have a relationship with Jesus the Person we are unlikely to know God at all. Jesus is the entire fullness of God and the exact representation of the Father. We were made to live in God; made to live in intimacy with God and redeemed to live in union with God. Jesus declared, ‘I and the Father are one’ because it was a fact and because He is our example. We and Jesus are one, if we believe and if we step into the treasure that is so often hidden and buried in the field of religion.
Without intimacy with Jesus we cannot know God. Even if we are believers, we will make a god in our own image or in the image of people who have had considerable influence on our lives. Some have made a ‘god’ out of their denomination and many have made a ‘god’ out of the church. The religious who rejected Jesus did so because they did not know God.
Unless we are captured by His Person and Presence we will probably make gods out of lesser things like money, prestige and power, even attempting to bend religion to meet our idols. For Christians the more subtle gods are church, Bible, doctrine, tradition and the system and culture that churchianity has built. The system and culture of some of the church is controlled by the spirit of anti-christ. This spirit will do anything to keep us away from the fullness of Jesus that is available to all who believe.
‘Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist’ 2 John 1.12 NIV
So warped can our impression of God become under this spirit that we become unable to perceive Jesus when He comes in the flesh of those who live in Him rather than in their version of Christianity.
The ability to know God starts with a heart that desires Him and a heart that is humble enough to receive Him in the ways He chooses to manifest. In the Old Testament David and those who danced before the restored ark with no intervening veil, were blessed with life while Uzzah touched the ark and died. David and the worshipers sang and danced in the Presence of the Lord while the priests ministered in the official temple where God was absent. It’s a grave thing to misunderstand God.
NATURE OF SIN
Sin, as seen by God, is more subtle than that seen through the lens of religion. Sins may manifest as immorality and crime. But the essence of wickedness is living independently of God. According to the Bible, many who might consider themselves to be upright fall into the category of ‘the wicked.’ The reason for this is that the opposite to wickedness is defined as ‘Seeking God’s face,’ which is something that the wicked have not valued or concerned themselves in doing.
‘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 Chron 7.14 NIV.
Jesus endured the cross so that all may live in intimacy with God and know His face. This was His prayer in John 17. Intimacy is not an option. It is a Gift. It is the normal Christian life and a life that can only be lived in the Spirit. How else can union with God be achieved? Certainly not by the head or the hand but because the Father’s mysterious Plan is Christ in us and among us.
‘God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation’ 2 Cor 5.19 NIV.
COMING IN THE FLESH
To be reconciled is to be united with God. In this season, Jesus has come and is coming in the flesh of those who desire Him and who have received their inheritance and began to live in it. This inheritance is union with God through intimacy with Jesus by the One Spirit, also called the Spirit of Sonship. Those who live in the Spirit are the sons of God and the sons of God live in the Spirit. To live in the Spirit is to live beyond the veil in the Presence of the Father. Here we are loved and filled with the resurrection life of Heaven in order to manifest this life in the hurly-burly of daily affairs on earth. Well is that cool or what?!
Eternal life is not to know about God, not to know theology about Jesus. It is to know God through Jesus because Jesus is our life. The Kingdom of God will increasingly reveal itself on earth through those who live in earth’s true King. The righteous will not depart the earth as some think. The righteous, authoritative life of Jesus is about to manifest on the earth through those in whom He lives.
CHRIST IN YOU
The King and His Kingdom will come in the flesh of God’s intimate friends. This Kingdom will be accompanied by life in itself and distinguished by the driving out of death and all that is deadening and dead. There will be healing of not only limbs and bodies but of families and cities. The Kingdom comes in the Spirit and manifests in the flesh or real people in everyday situations of life. Don’t neglect it and let it pass you by. Don’t reject it because you have made religion out of the head, the letter and flesh and have ears that cannot hear and eyes that will not see. Receive it because you desire to eat the flesh of the Son of Man!
‘But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut’ Matt 25.1’ 0 NIV.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
A life with Jesus does not mean that we will not be challenged. If Jesus is our life we will be persecuted openly or subtly. Such a life is an affront to those who are satisfied with ‘Christianity.’ But it is joy to those who hunger for God. His work does require imagination, planning and effort. But He said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Jesus also said that those who follow Him will not walk in confusion. They will have the light of life. If we are constantly worn out and prone to poor discernment and the pain and chaos that this brings there has to be a reason that is not hard to find. We are not living in Jesus. We are living in ourselves.
WORKERS ANONYMOUS
A legalist is no more likely to admit to legalism than an alcoholic is likely to admit that they are an alcoholic. At least not until their world has collapsed and their distress so great that they are forced to admit that there is something drastically wrong with who they are. I say who they are rather than what they are doing because their situation is related to identity. They are a worker. Paul called this being a slave, which is more accurate because they have a hard master: Themselves. In an effort to earn love and respect from others and themselves they have defined themselves as workers (slaves) rather then sons.
It is often assumed that Mary had the melancholy, contemplative disposition while Martha was a choleric ‘can do’ person. The text does not say that. Mary was possessed by Jesus. Martha appeared to be concerned with His needs. But appearance is all it was. She was possessed by her need to perform. Contemplatives can be as burdened with the desire to perform as cholerics. There are books to read, manuscripts to complete, poems to write and work to be published – all of which can crowd out what is better: Stillness with Jesus.
I’ve been with people who cannot relax and be still even at a restaurant. They seem obsessed with all the things they have to do and could be doing while they are having this meal. But there’s a deeper need that is prompting this. They need to be managing their identity, earning their worth and carving out a niche of respect.
But until they learn to live in Jesus and say goodbye to Eve they cannot do this. They are too busily entrapped in the activity of averting the bad, the poor, and the less than optimum while at the same time paddling beneath the water to manufacture the good. This is less a form of legalism that it is an effort to perform to their own expectations and that of the public gaze. It is a way of life. They are looking for love and they are hoping to win honour. The result, in varying degrees, is that they wear themselves out, and impose their brokenness on those close to them. They alienate their friends and experience increasing frustration because they fail to earn the love and honour they are looking for.
SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF GOD
We were meant to find honour, purpose and love. In Jesus we are loved by the Father and honoured as members of His house. We have been placed in God to be re-birthed as who we really are – not as slaves but as daughters and sons who are deeply loved by God. Our work is to know God through Jesus Christ and by so doing to know ourselves and who we are as daughters and sons. To be a living sacrifice; to find our being in Jesus is not to lose ourselves but to become who we really are – not machines who work in mechanical and stilted fashion - but human beings who flow in their individuality and purpose as the daughters and sons of God. Such people do not wear themselves out. Neither do they live in confusion.
Crucified in Christ we live our lives as sons and daughters of God in serenity and fruitfulness. The first thing the resurrected Jesus said to His friends following His resurrection was ‘Peace be with you.’ Alive in Jesus we live in peace, grace, purpose and fruitfulness. We are the sons of the free woman and we multiply love and freedom. You have an identity in Jesus as son/daughter of God. We are sons of God as we live in the Son of Man. Jesus said, ‘I and the Father are one.’ Thanks to Jesus and the combined ministry of the Father and the Holy Spirit you and God are one. How wonderful is that! Live in who you are. Live from your place in God and you will multiply the Kingdom of God.
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