CHRIST IN YOU. HIS KINGDOM IN THE WORLD |
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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012
Live in God. Love out of God. Excel in loving yourself and others because you are in Christ. Having your being in Christ you are in God. You are already in Christ. But it remains for you to choose to live where you have been placed. Because of the Father’s love you are equipped to be a son or daughter of God. By means of the incarnation, the cross and the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit your inheritance has been retrieved from the robber and given to you. Extend your heart and embrace it. Command your heart to enfold Jesus. Utter these words so the powers in heaven and earth can hear them: ‘Jesus has my heart. He is my life. As He lives in me He brings glory to His Name.’ When Jesus is your life you begin to multiply the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord’s prayer moves from a piety to a release of the authority of Jesus. Galatians 2.20 is yours. Live in what God’s love has done. Live as one greatly loved. Live from the secure position in which God has placed you. Live in the reality that God really is love – not law or performance but Love. ‘All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God’ 1 Cor 21.23, NIV. Your life in Adam is dead. You have been resurrected to live in Jesus. Now He is your life – a life not to copy so much as a life to be lived in by the Holy Spirit. – the Spirit of Christ in you. The miracle of the incarnation was that God became man. The miracle of Pentecost is that Christ who is seated in the heavens lives in human beings on earth. Jesus and His achievements are incarnated in you by the Spirit of Sonship as you labour in your olive grove, packing shed or wheat paddock. This is the deeper meaning of worshiping Jesus in Spirit and in truth. His life is not only manifest in you. His life becomes you as you eat your daily bread and as you eat Him. As a result you are a new being: A Son/daughter of God. ‘You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth’ Rev 5.10 NIV.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Jesus is not only the lens through which to view life. Jesus is life. Jesus is either our life or He is an also ran – an addition to the busyness of our hectic weeks and tiring years. But isn’t Jesus supposed to be life itself? Living in the letter rather than in the Spirit might not immediately be seen to be evil. Iniquity specializes in presenting as life something less than Christ in the name of Christ. Iniquity is not overtly evil as is sheer wickedness. Iniquity is not as easy to spot. Anyone can see that a dictator murdering his own people is evil. Iniquity is more subtle. It bundles levels of good and bad together in a package. Iniquity is found where people settle for less than the fullness of Jesus or are actively opposing it. Iniquity is evil because it is a form of death. Left to ourselves we will either try to find life through the excitement of rebellion or the self-centeredness of religion. A life in religion is just as much ‘all about us’ as is a life in rebellion, except in the latter the mystery of iniquity is more subtly concealed. But a life in Christ or to be more accurate, a life where JESUS IS YOUR LIFE is more fresh, free, self-perpetuating and life-multiplying than any self-centered option. Yesterday I listened to a talk in which the speaker mentioned that many Christians are just as much bound in religion in the house church that they attend, as they were in the larger church from which they exited. It amazes me that so many ‘leaders’ are still fixated on establishing a form of church that works. A question like ‘What’s wrong with the church is better answered with question like, ‘What’s wrong with my belief in God, my relationship to Jesus or my version of who Jesus is and what He has accomplished? Fortunately it is occurring to more and more that it’s not about ‘How can Jesus improve my life?’ But how can I more fully live His life and multiply Him?’ Any one who plants Jesus can expect success and with it persecutions. But rest assured, if you plant Jesus you will harvest sons and daughters of God who will multiply the Kingdom of God. Plant Jesus in people’s hearts and His love will bind them to the Father, deliver them from shame, empower them to love themselves and to love each other AND BE HOLY AS THE FATHER IS HOLY. Jesus builds His church, not man. The cross is the sign of His love and the power that binds us to each other with authentic heart-felt love. On this rock – love – Jesus builds His church. The love of Jesus alive in us comes from the Spirit who is the Spirit of Christ multiplied in His disciples. This is an irresistible power drawing us into Jesus and filling us with living water – the ability to love with power from on high. People for whom JESUS IS THEIR LIFE are His church because together they are the manifestation of His completeness. Any other style of church is a manifestation of the letter. It will be performance oriented, control motivated and guilt inducing – all for the purpose of getting people to perform to some religious ideal or some notion of church. As a result it is a ministry of death.
‘But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name’ John 20.31 NIV. Saturday, February 25, 2012
Back in 2007 the Lord directed my attention to an aspect of Kevin Rudd that was useful to those who promote the Kingdom of God. It was this: Rudd never answered the fear and negativism that flowed from Howard. He simply enlarged on the good things a Rudd government intended to do. But this was not an endorsement of everything that is or was Kevin 07. About a year later I commented in one of our Kingdom Builders seminars, that if Rudd the workaholic did not change his ways, he would implode. Little did I realize to what extent this would be true. I make a point of reading the better articles about politicians both from the right and the left. I like to see what is good about people and what is not, so that I can embrace their strength and avoid their mistakes. As followers of Jesus we can do this to advantage. We are not called to be someone else. But we can become wiser by observing and learning. Rudd clearly has intelligence and vision. But as time passed I picked up pieces of information about Rudd’s character that were gravely disappointing. This was not that he swore occasionally. It was the way he treated people. Stories started to seep out about rudeness, contempt for others and the centralization of power around himself. Cabinet, it seemed, ceased to exist and policies were sprung on interest groups with little preparation and consultation. There were things about Kevin that prevented him achieving the vision.
In talking about Kevin, we need to think about ourselves. Humility blesses us with the ability to listen. Allied to love, humility bonds us to people and enables them to empathize and trust us. Vanity has us acting beyond our ability. Vanity closes our ears and alienates those who could help us be what we are called to be. Humility brings honour, but vanity in the end brings shame. The meek will inherit the earth but the vain will attempt take from what belongs to others while failing to enjoy their own inheritance. We have entered a time in the church and in other places, when the Lord will uproot what He did not plant. We would do well to be exact and precise about our calling and not presume to be what we are not. To live in the Spirit is to live in a realm of sharpness and power where our placement in the House Jesus builds is subtle and specific. As some one wrote on Facebook recently, ‘When you quit trying to build yourself a ministry, then you might be in the place where God can build you one.’ See also James Button, We Need to Talk about Kevin, The Age, Feb 24, 2012.
Friday, February 24, 2012
The best news for people in these chaotic and stressful times is that Jesus is our life. Jesus called Himself the Way, the Truth and the Life and even more radically said, ‘Those who eat Me will live because of Me.’ When Jesus is our life we grow in the ability to live life to the full. This does not mean that we never suffer pain or challenge. But it does mean that we have sovereignty with Christ over all things. Paul used two phrases that are critical for those who would reign in life. The first is that Christ in you is the hope of glory. The second is an extension of the same ideal ‘When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.’ The second phrase together with the first denotes that it is Christ who is our life and glory today and in eternity. Jesus is our life because we have been joined to the Father in real time by the cross. We are one with the Father because Christ is in us and we are in Christ. We have been placed in God. John 13.31 reveals that Christ’s glory is His cross. His cross glorifies the Father which leads to the Son’s glory and the glory of the sons of God. In John 14.1-3 Jesus speaks of room for us in the Father’s Home. This is much more than a place in heaven. This ‘place’ is the union with God that we have been gifted with by the Father and the Son. Your ‘place’ is union with God today. Declare it and live it. Jesus asserts, ‘The words I speak are not my own. The Father lives in Me and does His work through Me.’ This is the Son’s place in the Father. It is also your place in Jesus. Through Jesus, you are in the Father and the Father is in you. This is your place, your foundation of love, strength and authority for day to day living (John 14.10-11).
Then Jesus says, ‘If you love Me, obey My Commands.’ But these are not the commands of Moses. They are Jesus’ commands. They are the assertions and teaching that we have just cited. Obeying these commands is The Way that we receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit, are led into truth and become truly sons rather than orphans (John 15.18). What is this command? To believe that Jesus is our life and live in Him. To be alive in Jesus is to have the completeness of holiness testifying continually in us. Many people apply this to the written word, but the context reveals it applies more fully to Jesus the Living Word who is spirit, truth and the complete expression of God’s righteousness into our lives: ‘For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ 4.12 NIV. Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Humility is a gift that blesses us with a smoother passage through life and ever expanding understanding. Humility enables us to love and be loved. Humility means we are open to truth because we have teachable hearts. The humble own the Kingdom of Heaven, the innocent of heart see God and those with a gentle disposition inherit the earth. All of which is a way of saying that Mary multiplies the Kingdom of God while Martha only thinks she does. ‘There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her’ Luke 10.42 NLT. Humility is associated with the ability to believe God and perceive His Kingdom. Humility opens our eyes to the presence of Jesus in others and among His people. The Kingdom of God is seen by those who are childlike, not childish. The mind of a child is open to wonder, awe and novelty, while the mind of the religious – read proud – is closed and self-absorbed in the things it thinks give it dignity and status. Thus Jesus exclaimed, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure’ Luke 10.21 NIV. In general people are better off with no religion than to have made a religion from religion. We see this when the Jews attempted to push Jesus over a cliff for saying that the heathen can be more ‘believing’ that those who ‘know God.’ Jesus said it would be more excusable on judgment day for Sodom than for the Jewish inhabitants of towns who had seen His signs and heard His witness and rejected Him (Luke 10.13,14). Religion, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, disposes us to mistake good for evil and evil for good and do it in the name of God. Puffed up in our own knowledge and conceptions of God – we reject Jesus when he comes in the flesh of persons of those more daring, more Godly and more free than ourselves. Those bound to Christ live without limitation. Adherents of religion call Bondage God. A lady wrote on Open Heaven recently, ‘The Lord has been having me go to hard-core biker bars and sharing the love of God. These people are not hypocritical. They are who they are and they don't try to hide it, and they are hungry for love and acceptance. I have never had to quench the flow of God's spirit being there and I have never been offended or wounded being who I am in the Lord.’ We may add, quite unlike her experience with the adherents of christianity [sic]. Rich or poor are capable of childishness and selfishness. As the poor we can exhibit the stubbornness of a mule. As the rich we can throw a class tantrum and make a political ideology out of our meanness and conceit. We are judged and we are judged by what we are and not what we profess. ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters. Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. He will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from God his Savior’ Ps 24.1-5 NIV. Recently I saw a news clip on TV about Bill and Melinda Gates and their charity work. Their interviewer was besotted with the notion and presence of wealth, in contrast to the Gates’ who were relaxed and taking joy in using their wealth to make a better world for the needy. You might object that the latter have so much money they don’t need to be besotted. Not a good argument given that there are very wealthy people for whom money is god and who give very little to the poor. Belinda Gates has none of the ditsyness of some of the society billionairesses. She is plain spoken, plain dressing and absorbed in generating life. I don’t know if the Gates’ have a faith or not but what is clear is that they love people. Their slogan is ‘All Lives Have Equal Value’ – a notion seemingly lost on those with a political version of christianity [sic]. Tuesday, February 21, 2012
The problem of the church today is not that we missed the proper configuration of what a church should be. The church’s problem is its weakness in the face of circumstances and the power of Satan in the world. Jesus told us that the powers of evil are unable to stand against the authority and might of His Church. So we must infer that much of the church is not His and that much of Christianity is not the manifestation of His life. How does this un-life come about? Jaques Ellul observes that the Christian system and culture with its institutions and behaviors – commonly known as Christainity – is the opposite of what is meant by the new creation. The Kingdom of God is never congealed, institutionalized or defined since it is a manifestation of the Spirit. Christ in people results in a dynamic of continual becoming. Life in the Spirit is the multiplication of the life of Jesus in the world. This is more than mere morality and ethics. It is life in itself. Key to reigning as kings and priests with Jesus as ministers to the world is the understanding that life in the Kingdom of God is a state of being. Sons and daughters of God live in God, not in themselves. But the sons of slavery and powerlessness live in themselves and strive towards God. Absorbed in the matrix of ‘Christianity’ they are stalled in the mind-set of the knowledge of good and evil and subject to the domination of the Prince of this World. I teach in a home group on living as sons of God to multiply the Kingdom of Christ. When I share my concerns that most Christians, if not outright legalists, remain tied to a far more subtle legalism which is the underlying performance orientation that is implied by the term ‘Christian,’ they are taken aback. I don’t mean to imply that they are bad people. But I do state emphatically that they are not living in what Jesus established by His resurrection and multiplied at Pentecost: Life in the Spirit of Sonship. The life of the sons and daughters of God is a life in the Spirit. This is not a belief system, not rules, not buildings or services, not times or patterns of living. Our life in Jesus is free, holy, whole, loving, life-giving and triumphant. It is a life lived in union with God. It is the Father’s life manifest through you into the world. ‘For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 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. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!’ Galatians 2.19-21 NIV. More - Jaques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity | pdf | htm
Monday, February 20, 2012
Since we were little tots our mothers urged us to ‘be good.’ Thus it may come as a surprise to learn that the Kingdom of God is not about morality. Not initially. If it was God’s people would be no further ahead than the politically correct, and we all know what pains they can be! If the Kingdom of God could be summed up in one word it would be JESUS. The Kingdom of God is about a life in God through Jesus, God’s Son. We need to settle ourselves into what the Kingdom of God is. Then we can be co-laborers with Jesus and rather than spruikers of a Christianized version of the knowledge of good and evil. This may sound godly but it is actually iniquitous. If people have not escaped the belief that Jesus came to establish Moses’ laws, many are stuck in the view that Jesus came to establish morality. This is another way of saying that Jesus lives to make us Christian. But He doesn’t. He lives to make us like Himself. To define our Christ-life as morality makes us neither moral or Godly. But it can make us hypocritical. ‘Moralizing Jesus’ robs us of the truth that Jesus came to establish life. He came to resurrect the life forfeited by Adam. One who lives in Jesus and for whom Jesus is life will become holy because God in Him is Holy. But this will never happen to one whose gospel is morality. Such a one will grow in frustration but never in fullness of life. Recently we discovered a group of God’s people who believe that Godliness is achieved by reading the Bible and doing the stuff. If only. Of course they are not Robinson Crusoe in this. It’s what our life in God has been subverted to. If only it worked! But it does not and it does not work because this is not the gospel of Christ. God’s plan revealed in Jesus is CHRIST IN YOU! Jesus came to multiply Himself in us. He does this by the Spirit. The Spirit of Sonship lives in us, transforms us and embraces us. In Jesus the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. But should we attempt to live from ethics or a belief system, the parts will never be whole and the whole will be much smaller than it could be. As a result we ill be unholy. But God says, ‘Be holy as I am holy.’ How? His Son becomes our life. How is this? By the Spirit of new birth and fullness. Much of what sincere, God-loving Believers believe is not the Kingdom of God. It is the knowledge of good and evil in its Christianized form. This is not to say that such believers are bad people. They are trying to be Godly. But people can be Godly and robbed. Sincerity is not enough. A sincere Air New Zealand flight crew believed they were on course. But their aircraft crashed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica because the computer program was wrong. Sincerity did not save them. No. Our place is in God. We don’t have to strive for this. In Jesus we have been already put there. We have been saved to live in God. Many have been robbed because they have become attached to false doctrine. But their ‘common sense notions’ do not line up with the New Testament or the statements of enlightened theologians such as Bonhoeffer, Ellul and Gregory Boyd, all of whom uncover the glory of Christ and the glory of the human race as Christ in us. Boyd quotes Jaques Ellul as follows ‘The revelation of God in Jesus Christ is against morality. Not only is it honestly impossible to derive a moral system from the Gospels and the Epistles, but further, the main keys in the gospel, the proclamation of grace, the declaration of pardon, and the opening up of life to freedom are the direct opposite of morality. For they imply that all conduct, including that of the devout, or the most moral, is wholly engulfed in sin.
Boyd concludes, ‘The New Testament is not about ethical behavior; it about a radical new way of living. It is about life lived in surrendered union to God through faith in Jesus Christ. It is about experiencing the transforming power of God’s love flowing into and through a person. It demands a form of holiness that is far more exacting than any ethical or religious system.’ (Boyd G, Repenting of Religion, Baker, p 96). The righteousness sent from God is not a list or a belief system. To live from this position it to dis-empower ourselves and multiply death in the name of Jesus. Bonhoeffer writes, ‘It is not written that God became an idea, a principle, a program, a universally valid proposition or a law, but that God became a man.’ (Ethics p 86). God became an man and lives in you. Acknowledge this and invite Jesus to be your life. ‘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. ‘I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing’ John 15.5 NIV.
Saturday, February 17, 2012There are many definitions of religion. One I learned in sociology class was, ‘Religion is society and society is religion.’ There’s a lot of truth in that, since there are many ways in which society attempts to gather sacredness by worshiping itself. ‘Self-worship’ usually takes a subtle form whether it is the worship of ourselves or the worship of institutions. What ever form self-worship takes, it makes us smaller. ‘Worship’ whether sacred or secular can be the act of absorbing ourselves in something greater than ourselves. Some find themselves absorbed in sport, others in the acquisition of wealth, others in family. Then there are those whose lives are absorbed in religion. All of these may provide a level of satisfaction and all were meant to benefit us. But none of them were meant to be ‘lived in’ since none can provide us with the life of God. God’s Way, is for us to live in God so that we can impart His life to the things we do. We were created as life-givers and have been redeemed to overcome the bonds of death by multiplying Jesus into the things we do. One of the purposes of religion is to provide people with the hope of some kind of existence beyond death. Many religions posit some kind of after death ‘being.’ Only Christianity claims an eternal life in the body – a body that is not the same as the one we have now, but a body nevertheless and one that transcends this mortal carapace in ways yet to be revealed. Like many reading this, I have experienced the stings of death. My father died at 29 with cancer. My stepfather died at 68 with pericarditis. My mother died in 2004 with a lung condition. We buried my wife’s mother this week at the age of 90. My aunt died yesterday at 92. As Yet, I myself and still here! We do not grieve as those who have no hope, but we do grieve. When my mother died I explained to myself that death was inevitable, normal and part of life and this is what I should expect to happen at my stage of life. My heart said otherwise however. It refused to listen to this rattling rationalization and would not allow itself to come to terms with the atrocity that had befallen it. My mother was not meant to die. No one was meant to die. Death is a catastrophe that falls like a pall across the inheritors of the knowledge of good and evil. But it should never again be accepted as normal. Jesus has risen from the grave and sits at the Father’s right hand. There are many forms of death. That which we call death is but the culmination of the million forms of death’s subtleties that afflict us during life – fear, disappointment, loss of hope, despair, pain, sorrow, loss of identity, loss of purpose, depression – and not failing to mention the plague of cynicism with which we attempt to bandage blighted dreams. Eternal Life is more than pie in the sky by and by. A full and satisfying life is much more than a home in heaven at the end of a life of persistence and endurance. Life is what God is – infinite love, freshness, joy, valor, colour and adventure. God is love and God is life. God is Jesus Christ who is life itself. Life is a Person and so is love. To know that Jesus is the resurrection and the life is not just to have a ‘blessed hope.’ It is to have a daily life that is alive. It is to have a spring of living water welling up inside one’s being with which to water our existence. But this life comes from Jesus and never from religion. This life cannot be found in Christianity, churchianity or in any buzz-word like community, simple church or organic church. Life will attach itself to those who join themselves to Jesus. He is life itself. Joined to Jesus we become Christ’s body, Christ’s church, Christ’s life embodied in the world. Life grows organically from the Person of Jesus who is life Himself. Branches of creation spring from His Presence when human beings are joined to Jesus rather than grafted in to institutions, abstractions, constructs and buzz words. Those who live in these lesser things are overcome with staleness. But those whose life is Christ, overcome the world. ‘I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing’ John 15.5 NIV.
‘In him was life, and that life was the light of men’ John 1.4 NIV. ‘For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself’ John 5.26 NIV
Monday, February 13, 2012
The best news for people in these chaotic and stressful times is that Jesus is our life. Jesus called Himself the Way, the Truth and the Life and even more radically said, ‘Those who eat Me will live because of Me.’ When Jesus is our life we grow in the ability to live life to the full. This does not mean that we never suffer pain or challenge. But it does mean that we have sovereignty with Christ over all things. Paul used two phrases that are critical for those who would reign in life. The first is that Christ in you is the hope of glory. The second is an extension of the same ideal ‘When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.’ The second phrase together with the first denotes that it is Christ who is our life and glory today and in eternity. Jesus is our life because we have been joined to the Father in real time by the cross. We are one with the Father because Christ is in us and we are in Christ. We have been placed in God. John 13.31 reveals that Christ’s glory is His cross. His cross glorifies the Father which leads to the Son’s glory and the glory of the sons of God. In John 14.1-3 Jesus speaks of room for us in the Father’s Home. This is much more than a place in heaven. This ‘place’ is the union with God that we have been gifted with by the Father and the Son. Your ‘place’ is union with God. Declare it and live it. Jesus asserts, ‘The words I speak are not my own. The Father lives in Me and does His work through Me.’ This is the Son’s place in the Father. It is also your place in Jesus. Through Jesus, you are in the Father and the Father is in you. This is your place, your foundation of love, strength and authority for day to day living (John 14.10-11). Then Jesus says, ‘If you love Me, obey My Commands.’ But these are not the commands of Moses. They are Jesus commands. They are the assertions and teaching that we have just cited. Obeying these commands is the Way that we receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit, are led into truth and become truly sons rather than orphans (John 15.18). What is this command. To believe that Jesus is our life and live in Him.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
What is our design? We were made in the image of God; made to represent the Father on earth as authoritative sons and daughters; created to represent the fullness of God as man and as woman. Our identity was sons. Our purpose was to represent and administer God’s government in the world. The best teaching on the human mandate as the sons of God can be found in Dutch Sheets’, Intercessory Prayer, particularly chapter one of the book. Humans were created to be free and promote life in all its forms. They were made stewards of creation. All this was lost through capitulation to the illusion of godliness and power from the knowledge of good and evil. Humans became debased and bestial, carrying about the pangs of death even as they lived. Jesus retrieved our Sonship and high calling. The status of sons of God and Bride of Christ belongs to those who believe. The question is, ‘What do you believe?’ Many sincere, good-living Christians with a heart for God live way below their potential. They adore the cross more than the resurrection and are more focused on sins forgiven than a new life imparted. Many live from the values and ethics of the Bible rather than from the Person of Jesus as their life. Jesus came to earth, died and rose again to live in us by the Spirit; to live in us so that His life is lived through us; to live in us so that all can multiply what Jesus began.
To receive Jesus as our life is to live in His forgiveness and constant infilling of life from The Life-Giving Spirit. We can live robbed or live from the treasure in the field. There is what Christians have been erroneously led to believe and what Christians have the privilege of believing. ‘And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death’ Rom 8.2 NLT. Jesus returned to earth in the Spirit at Pentecost. His purpose has been to live in His people so that His people can multiply what Jesus began – healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons and multiplying the life of heaven on earth in all its colour and variety. We are either livers of sand or rivers of life. It’s unfortunate that so many of us have allowed ourselves to lived robbed – robbed by the Enemy of the authority, power and ability to love that is ours in Jesus. We need to live from the right tree. Why? One tree affords authority over the Enemy. The other ensures his dominance. Since the incarnation of Jesus in Mary and the consequent incarnation of Jesus in all who believe by the Spirit, every Believer is greater than John the Baptist. Why? The resurrected Jesus lives in them. Every believer can minister the Presence and authority of Jesus. But we must have Jesus as our life and not the knowledge of good and evil as our living. Adam ended at the cross. Your life as sons in God began with Jesus at the resurrection. The touchstone of genuine Christianity is Christ come in the flesh – Jesus His mission and authoritative love multiplied in the being of you and those who believe. ‘For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ Col 3.3-4 NLT. ‘But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him’ 1 Cor 6.17 NLT Friday, February 10, 2012
In the Kingdom of God it’s not what you know. It’s who you know that counts. This should not be taken the way we have learned to take it in the world of carnal influence that shades into corruption. The Kingdom of God is knowing Jesus. It’s being found in Him and having His life lived in you. Jesus reigning in us is the Kingdom of God in the world. There’s a Christian Industry and there’s the Kingdom of God’s daughters and sons. The former is a work of the flesh. The latter is the fruit of the Spirit of Christ in His people. In the Kingdom of God people are heart-joined to Jesus. As a result they gain the capacity to know and love each other. It is this heart-union with God that also makes them the Bride of Christ. It is the union of the Bride with the Groom that reproduces Jesus in people and the world. Many sincere Believers remain caught in a fleshly ‘who you know’ mentality. Not a few follow celebrity speakers acting much like fans. Multitudes hang on their every word on Facebook and other places. It’s not that these speakers don’t have good things to say. It’s just that Jesus wants to know us all intimately and instruct each of us personally. Some of the Body gain a certain satisfaction from attending a ‘cutting edge’ church or aligning themselves with a famous speaker. Draw your life from a famous Jesus! Always look past speakers to the Jesus who inhabits them. Don’t expect to get from a conference speaker what that speaker gained through trust in God, a passion for Jesus, obedience to His voice and a willingness to face reproach and persecution for the truth. Intimacy with Jesus comes through sacrifice, pain and the willingness to be of no reputation for the sake of Christ. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground it becomes nothing. All who grow spend time hidden in the Son of Man. There are teachers and apostles who speak for God, unveil the glory of Jesus and clear away false doctrine. They help us get rid of the layers of iniquity that distort the nature of God and bind us in identities far smaller than we are. When Paul declared that ‘Christ is not divided,’ and warned people against proclaiming ‘I am of Paul’ and ‘I am of Cephas’ he was warning against idolatry. But he was also expressing the greater truth that Christ in various apostles and teachers is revealing the wonders of who He is and the fullness of who all can become in Jesus. Jesus reveals the fullness of Himself through different people. There are many more five fold ministers than are currently recognized by the Christian Industry. There are millions more who could minister Jesus in shops and offices if they would wean themselves off reliance on the mediation of celebrities and relate to Jesus directly rather than through a church built by human hands. We cannot live victoriously as sons of God by following celebrities or even reading the Bible with a view to doing all that it says. We become sons because we acknowledge that the Son of Man lives in us and that He is our life. Thursday, February 9, 2012
The life of sons comes by the Spirit. It is the Spirit of Christ in us that makes us sons and enables us to see and grow in seeing as God sees. Jesus is One who heals us of the blindness that has afflicted us – blindness that comes from having lived in the regime of the Father of lies and the misinterpretation of people and events that afflicts all who live in the knowledge of good and evil. In Jesus, in His light, we see light and know light. We gain a new epistemology 1 that comes from heaven and not from earth. We know the way. We know truth. We perceive that which is real life by living in Jesus the Son of God. Jesus was God’s Revelation and ‘lens’ who entered the world as The Son of Man. Innocent hearts who received Jesus began to see, while ideologues tied to the importance of their identity and position did not. Thus Jesus heals a blind man who was a nobody. He receives His sight in the natural and instantly his vision is enlarged in the spiritual. So sharp is his spiritual vision now that he gives an entirely un-premeditated rebuke to the teachers of the law. We are not told much of the history of this man. But his remarks to the teachers of the law and his instant worship of Jesus suggest that he had always been a man with a heart after God. It’s significant that this blind man saw the Messiah but teachers of the law did not. ‘Not all who use the name of God are worshipers of Him. Some use His name but their God is themselves.’ The story of Jesus and the blind man in John chapter 9 has great significance for this day. Those whose life is Jesus will see. Those whose life has been made from the religion of Jesus will not. Not unless they repent and live in His life instead of their own. In Jesus’ day, the purveyors of law and religion condemned themselves out of their own mouths. ‘We are disciples of Moses, but we don’t even know where this man comes from’ John 9.28-29. They didn’t know because they could not see. The lesson is clear. Intransigent disciples of Moses cannot see. They are not able to discern the Kingdom of God. Should we be attempting to live from the Ten Commandments, from our personal life commands and from the performance criteria of others, we will not see the Kingdom of God. Sure we will flourish in religion but we will not see. We will not see that we are purveying powerless religion in the name of God. Jesus knocks at your door. He desires to come into your being and to give sight to blind eyes. Jesus is the light of the world who liberates all from blindness who will receive Him so that they can repent, turn to Him and see. Jesus is your sight! ‘The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned’ Isa 9.2 NIV. ‘This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil’ John 3.19 NIV. 1. The way in which we organizes knowledge to interpret the world.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
When Jesus touches our eyes we begin to see. But often we do not see because what we think is Jesus is not actually Jesus but his reinvention in our own image. Many bound people do not know that they are bound. There are those who get to suspect that they are. They begin to take measures that constrict themselves even more while others adopt strategies that allow a tolerable existence. As the conflict between the teachers of the law and Jesus demonstrates, religious captivity and blindness is the most insidious of all blindness’s. Such blindness causes us to reject life and results in many living out their lives in a ditch. It’s clear from the book of Acts that the Kingdom of God is associated with the resurrected Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. Clear also that the power of the Spirit is not only about ‘gifts’ but about the life of Jesus manifesting through His people. There are those who tire of religious captivity and the crippled life it affords them and turn to God. The most blessed of these are those who discover Jesus, turn to Him, repent of their self-obsession and make Him their life. Those who become the most fearless and free are those whose being is so engulfed by the Spirit of Christ that they grow daily into the glory of who they really are: The sons and daughters of God. But some don’t make it this far. They remain stuck in a Christianized version of the knowledge of good and evil. They try to use Jesus to help them live all that is written in the Bible. They need to know that the Bible leads to Jesus but Jesus does not lead to the Bible. The Bible testifies to Jesus. But rather than getting a life in Jesus and becoming a resurrected people, many get stuck in the letter, attempting to use Jesus to help them live what He has delivered them from: The law. This version of Christianity multiplies bondage even as it abuses the name of Jesus. Lamenting the spiritual dimness of such believers, Paul wrote. ‘These children of the law do not understand. They have hard hearts. Their ears are deaf and their eyes are blind. John wrote, ‘So absorbed in themselves are they that they cannot turn to me and receive my healing.’ The prophets, Jesus and Paul lamented the fact that so many of God’s people were captured by their own identity and package that they could not turn to the Lord and receive Him in His fullness. We can harden our hearts for a variety of reasons. In doing so we lose sensitivity to the light that is God. We may be glued to our religious identity out of pride. We may be congealed in our works-law centered beliefs out of fear – fear that is too dangerous to walk on the waters of grace and Spirit; fear that our package is safer than the Everlasting Gospel of Christ as our life; fear of resigning the control of our life to Jesus; fear that makes us believe that the lies seeded into our soul by the father of lies are true. Given the opportunity, many continually choose that which appears safe over the desires of their heart. The hearts of some are so suppressed and submerged in the fabric of past choices (strongholds) that they uphold them as if they are upholding great wisdom. In this fashion demons bind people in subjection to lies. When we reject the call of our heart out of fear or tradition we harden it progressively and accommodate ourselves to our bondage as if it is truth. All the while we become more crippled and diseased. God loves people who are daring towards Him because it is they who live intimately with Him; they who are transformed into His sons, kings and priests. It is the daring who seize the Kingdom of God and guarantee its advance. Paul lived in Rome boldly preaching the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. It was his obsession with Jesus that made Him free and His transition out of law into the Spirit of Christ that made Paul the liberator of others. Paul is an example but Jesus is our life. As Jesus lives in you imparting Himself to you, you become an extension of His Person. You draw people to Jesus and by living in Jesus you set others free. One with Him you become a son in spirit and in truth. By the One Spirit you do nothing on your own. You only say and do what Jesus teaches you to do and instructs you to do in any situation. This happens because Christ really is your life.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The Father has life and light in Himself. So does Jesus. Those in whom Jesus lives multiply this life and light. It His light and discernment that is our focus today – particularly as it applies to Bible knowledge. What the Bible says when read through the lens of the Spirit of Light it quite different to what it can say through the lens of the letter and the prism of the knowledge of good and evil. Read it through this lens and it will multiply doctrine and ethics. Read it through Jesus and the Bible will multiply life. In this case the text will not be ‘the letter’ but the Word of God. The two lenses which are the two trees have a subtle and profound effect on how we use the Bible and on our life in general. One multiplies life. The other multiplies death. Eating the fruit of the wrong tree we can find ourselves doing things that are helpful to ministries and which improve the lot of humanity. Such things may bring us personal satisfaction. Yet as virtuous as our activities appear they do not belong to the Kingdom of God. Never forget that one tree multiplies life. The other tree multiplies iniquity and death – death not in its obvious sense, but death in that it is not the ‘life in itself’ that is God in you. ‘This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us’ 1 John 1.2 NIV. Religious iniquity is subtle and pervasive, robbing millions of God’s people of joy and the capacity to operate in the freedom and authority of God. The worst effect of drawing sustenance from the wrong tree is that we remain under the curse because we remain situated in the legitimate authority zone of the Enemy. ‘For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself’ 5.26 NIV.
Monday, February 6, 2012
We have an inbuilt desire to make a name of ourselves. In an unfallen state this desire would motivate us to be EVERYTHING God made us to be in identity and purpose. The world is the poorer when we are not really who we are and not doing those things that we can do well. In our present state, we remain fallen. Yet we no longer have to live in Adam. In the Spirit we may eat the risen Christ and find contentment as He fills our being. This is how we live in the resurrection instead of the fall. By the Spirit we can live in the new man, the life-giving Spirit who is whole and free. We can live in the Son of Man who sets us free to multiply life for others without robbing them of life. We can become life giving without making other people less than themselves. But this is not our natural leaning. The cult of status and power that entered with the knowledge of good and evil displaced our true sense of identity and purpose. Since we knew that we were naked we began to clothe ourselves with anything that would stroke our ego. We needed to draw attention to ourselves, surround ourselves with admirers and have as many people hanging off us as possible. Many in ministry have a need to create dependency because our inner man cries out, ‘I need to be important!’ But Jesus says to us, ‘I will fill your need.’ There are models of leadership in which you are the guru and either fifteen or 15,ooo are hanging off your every insight. It is difficult not to suspect that persons with this kind of ministry are not addicted to the attention. And that they do not develop a regard for their personal opinions that threatens humility. There is safety in humility. Genuine spiritual authority is inversely related to Christ’s humility in us. There is safety in numbers but only when those we are walking with a resting in the safe place of intimacy with Jesus.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Jesus shouted out at the top of His voice, ‘Anyone who is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. The rivers of living water will flow from His heart! (John 7.37-38). As we speak the supremacy of Jesus in the power of the Spirit is becoming known. People are worshiping Jesus as savior and King. Their thirst is quenched with living water. Their spirit becomes alive and living water flows out of them and around them in a swirl of life and peace. When these people meet together they are the church that Jesus has built. It is Jesus who quenches our thirst for life. Only Jesus can arrest living-death and replace it with life that bubbles up eternally. Increasingly there are people who know this. They drink from Jesus and their hearts are satisfied. The New Living Translation says, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from their hearts.’ It is the heart that is key here. The heart that becomes one with God becomes united to His love. Such a heart receives love, gives love and is love. But this ‘love’ is not just an emotion. It is a love produced by knowing God in Christ. This love reveals who we are and who our brothers and sisters are. Alive in the Spirit of Christ we know ourselves and each other as we are. This kind of knowing allows Jesus to place us where we belong in His House. When such people join together they are the church. They are the church that is built by Jesus, shaped by the embrace of His love and light. Nurture, sustenance and nourishment flows from Jesus into their hearts and from their hearts into the community that is formed from their union with Jesus. Community and leadership emerge when we are joined to Jesus – not when we have gathered around a set of abstractions. Joined to Jesus and one in Him we are His Body. Gathered around anything else we are a valley of dead bones. Yet substitutes for Jesus are continually proffered. The most stubborn of these is the notion of church itself – church that is not Christ planted but some abstraction, some desirable quality, doctrine or proprietary name and this entity becomes a false mediator and a barrier between Jesus and the people. Living water will not flow from those attempting to quench their thirst for God with ‘church’ no matter if it is simple or complex. Life cannot flow from anything that is a manifestation of the letter. We receive a full life-flow when we drink directly from the Spring of living water. I’m not saying this to be unkind. I need to say it so that people can live in the Person of Jesus to be His church. ‘O that’s given!’ some might say. It is a given because in many instances it has been given away. Church that exists as a thing in itself robs people of life. A house church based on ‘Let’s get church right’ is just as burdensome as any aspect of popery. An obsession with church takes the revelation that is currently being released by Jesus to feed itself and the Christian Industry. In this respect it is like a tumor that feeds itself while killing the host. Jesus is life itself. Those who feed on Him will live because of Him. They are His Church. Gather together to drink and eat Jesus and He will produce the church from among you. Plant church and you will reap church. Plant Jesus and you will reap sons and daughters of God. ‘Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing’ John 15.5 NLT ‘Jesus shouted to the crowds, ‘If you trust me, you are trusting not only me, but also God who sent me’’ John 12.24 NIV. Friday, February 3, 3012
Jesus healed disease because disease IS debilitating. He forgave sin because sin is crippling and degrading. Sin is the result of living in self instead of living in God. The prejudice, alienation and abuse that humans endure occurs because we humans live in judgment rather than in the love and life that is Jesus. ‘We imagine we are gods knowing good and evil. But the fact is that many of us are not Godly and we do evil in the name of God.’ The father loves people and hates sin. Sin degrades people, deforms their being, wastes their bodies and suffocates their spirit. Sin is an atrocity that defaces the Father’s offspring. Sin is a cancer that consumes its host. Yet sin is the delusion that many think is freedom. Many people live in the sin of rebellion while many Christians live in the sin of hypocrisy, even as they uphold the law and multiply lawlessness by doing so. The law never multiplies the Kingdom of God. Only Jesus does that. “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” Hebrews 4.12 NOV. There is a Word that is alive. There is a more exact, more precise, a more comprehensive and penetrating kind of righteousness at large since the resurrection: The Person of Jesus. It is His Person, His purity, His love and His life that molds the believer today. He is a transforming power. Righteousness is Jesus. To live outside Him is to be condemned. But there is no condemnation for those who live in Christ Jesus. So why if we live in Him do we offer the ugly ministry of condemnation? Could it be that we don’t live in Jesus? Could it be that we live in ourselves, our morality and our churchy smugness but not in God. Could it be that although living in the New Testament we live in the Old and cry out to Christ to help us to it? Could it be that we need to repent of such folly? Could it be that we need to know that God is love and that the definition of that love is Jesus? The law of sin and death states that one who sins must die. This is the sentence that comes to those who live in the knowledge of good and evil – a knowledge that offers life but delivers judgment and death. So Jesus dies for the sin of all. Sin is so terrible that the son of God dies so that God’s sons can be genuine sons by receiving forgiveness and life. The knowledge of good and evil does not rid sinners of evil. Jesus does. Rants against sin, rants against sinners and Christian bullying, thinly disguised as ‘intercession’ do not bring sinners to repentance. But the presence of Jesus does. Rants urging sinners to repent are pretty much misplaced. It is the Presence of Jesus that brings conviction of sin and turning from a self life to a Jesus-life. We must pray Jesus around and over people. But at present this is beyond many Believers since they live a Christianized version of the knowledge of good and evil. They remain in old Adam using the name of Jesus to beat themselves and others into submission. But it’s a fruitless quest leading to hypocrisy, judgementalism and powerlessness. When Christ is our life we can expect His Real Presence to flood dark areas with transforming power. Such an encounter means that sinners will spontaneously fall under the conviction of God, weep for their sins and be struck with contrition from ignoring Jesus. They will cry out, ‘What must we do to be saved!?’ Thursday, February 2, 2012
Why did Jesus say, ‘I am the Life?’ Why did Paul talk of ‘Christ your life?’ An intellectualized version of Christianity does not produce life. But a Jesus as your life MAKES US ALIVE. Why? Because life is spirit. Jesus said, ‘Those who eat Me will live because of Me.’ Jesus is our life today, everyday and in eternity. Those who have the Son have life. Those who live from other things do not. ‘The Father has life in himself, and he has granted that same life-giving power to his Son’ John 5.26 NLT. ‘For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself’ John 5.26. NIV. The cross of Jesus divides history in two. We have life in the knowledge of good and evil and life in Christ. Live in doctrines, behaviors and religion and rigors of death will cling to us. But to live in the Person of Jesus is to be filled with His life. Because Jesus is life itself and He is your life you will be alive and overflow with His life. Jesus has given us all of Himself but for various reasons we may have only bits of Him rather than all of Him. Jesus can work through any part of us that has been given to Him. But there is infinitely more life in those who live from His Person rather than His religion. There are oceans of life that flow from those who live in the New Covenant compared to the drops of perspiration that we might shake off by living in the Old. Little life flows from us if we are children of the letter, but large volumes flow forth conquering and to conquer when we live from the Spirit. There is a powerful life emitting from us when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, as compared to the limitations that restrict us when we are bound to our best efforts. We need to ensure that we live from the doctrine of the apostles rather than the doctrines of men. ‘They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer’ Acts 2.42 NIV.
‘When the governor saw what had happened, he became a believer, for he was astonished at the teaching about the Lord’ Acts 13.12 NLT.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
This post is about Christ’s cross and its place in your life. The miracle that introduced Christ’s glory to the world was the changing of water into wine. He changed the mundane and ordinary into something that was desirable and special. But these miracles were not His glory. His glory was and is His cross. This is His plan for ministry – to change that which is earthly to something that is charged with the life of heaven. The life of heaven is spirit and spiritual because it is the life of God. Heavenly life on earth is revealed as Christ in you. The Bible tells us that water to wine was the first miracle that revealed Jesus’ glory. Yet we find Jesus telling Nicodemus that the miracles were not everything. More important than the miracles was the ability to see the Kingdom of God and live in it. ‘Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again’ John 3.3 NIV. To see the Kingdom of God; to observe its nature and the dynamics of its operation we need to have moved from life in the flesh to life in the Spirit. In the latter we have been re-born as daughters and sons of God. We are sons of the free woman and not sons of the slave woman. The slave woman represents an attempted life in God that is earthy and unspiritual – although it is imagined by thousands to be the normal Christian life. What many Christians think is being ‘Born Again’ is nothing of the kind. It is simply laying down some bad works and taking up the good ones. For some it means leaving a life out of church to begin a life in one. To be born again all of us has to die. Which alerts us to the fact that it is the cross and not ‘the gifts’ that is the source of Kingdom Life. The cross is the end of Adam in you. When we are born again the source of our being changes. We move from a life in the knowledge of good and evil to a life that is in God by the Spirit. Christ becomes our life. We move from an attempted godliness by means of performance into a place of rest in Jesus where we are filled and overflowed with His life. To be re-born as sons we must obey Christ’s command: I AM YOUR LIFE! Positioned in God through Christ we can now see the Kingdom of God. We are living in the light. Not walking in the darkness and confusion of the knowledge of good and evil we walk in the light. The miraculous alone is not the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is a realm of love, togetherness and authority that is the life of those who live and see Christ. Many Christians have started with themselves instead of the cross. Thousands of charismatics are not born again. They just think they are and purvey a system of churchly works. Not dead to self they are absorbed in the burden of ‘overcoming sin.’ To experience the resurrection we have to start with the cross. We must be crucified with Christ before we can live. The new birth is not a move from an inferior morality to a better one. It is a change of being. It’s death to our life in Adam and re-birth to our new life in Jesus. It is having our being in Christ the son of God. The ability to see in the Spirit; to live as kings and priests in the Kingdom of God does not come to us by intelligence or education. It comes as revelation by the Spirit. This is why it is those with the simple humility of a little child can see the Kingdom of God. ‘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.
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‘There is one body and one Spirit one Lord, one faith, one baptism one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all’ Eph. 4.4-6 (NIV )
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