Thursday, May 5, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Oneness(I-AM-Ness) Defined
Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is ONE body, and ONE Spirit, even as ye are called in ONE hope of your calling; ONE Lord, ONE faith, ONE baptism, ONE God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all (Eph 4:3-6)
There is only ONE Spirit, who is the source of all Life and He has existed from the very beginning and He is outside time. While many bodies are replicated from one Original- Adam’s Body, only One Life, One Spirit has existed all the time in those reproduced bodies. Let’s take the life of a bean seed, just as one bean seed emanates from another bean seed, if you go back into time to the very beginning, you will trace the life of beans to the first bean seed to be created, that germinated and reproduced itself since then. In that bean seed there is the life force that gives it the ability to reproduce after its own kind and the source of that life force is the Spirit, who is the Source of all Life, and is coined by many names although the Universal understanding is God the Creator. This Spirit is the Life source behind all living things, through all and in all. He comes from a formless state into whatever living creature is made, like the bean seed.
“I AM the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside Me.” (Isaiah 45:5).
Based on the above background, it means you, the reader, are the one and only being (only Spirit) there is. When you say, “I AM,” that means the sum-total of all the personalities in the world. All other conceptions are projections in space of the one being, yourself. Unfortunately ever since the fall, Man has always negated or chosen to forget the existence of this creative force or the source of life within him and has all the while insisted that the Spirit (God) dwells without and not within. In the end this force has been docile or remained dormant inside man, like a dormant volcanic mountain. Such a scenario does not mean that the mountain can never erupt, it’s just inactive.
In the Bible --the “I AM” is constantly used in phrases to describe God such as,
(John 14:6). “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
(John 11:25). “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”
(Ex. 3:14). “I am that I am.”
(John 6:48). I am that bread of life
These and similar sayings shine forth in all their true brilliance the moment we see that Jesus, the Christ, was not speaking of Himself personally, but of the principle of “Being” inherent in all mankind. Until you realize that the “Being” of Jesus so detailed and intricately described in the bible is actually you, then you cannot comprehend the bible when it says that ...as He is, so are we in this world (1John 4:17). It means you are still asleep and as a result subject to the mould of the world, the interpretations of men which are all outward. And that your life is based on the tree of knowledge of good and evil rather than the tree of life as described in Genesis 2:9 which says “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil”. Wherever you see Jesus being talked about in the bible, understand it is you the reader (the 2nd Adam) being discussed.
God continues to exist in flesh (effectively making our bodies His temple), and the only replicating element in this infinite existence is the Flesh, but the Spirit all along is the same. That is why we are called Human “Beings” not doings. It is God in Human form, even if the flesh may be inert or un-awakened to this element. Jesus is the full manifestation of an awakened “Being” and that makes Him the fullest example of the Spirit in full control of the flesh. That is why John 1:16 says of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace. This is the same being described, although right now it is in this flesh of you the reader. Suffice it to say that, you must believe first, in order to understand this dimension of life.
What Truth man has perpetually failed to see is that there is only one man, for the same reason that there is only one God. God and man are one John 14:11 says –“I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” Mathematically you cannot divide or multiply a value of one by itself, an d get an answer other than one. Infinity cannot be divided or multiplied. The seeming divisions (because they are not physical but logical) that manifest as divergent beliefs opinions and religions are the illusions of boundaries build and defined by men.
Our focus is to awaken and attune to that innermost Self which is the pure life generating Spirit, and which is not subject to any condition(s) whatsoever. We feel that we are conditioned by time and space, but these conditions have no place in the essential “Being” who is now resident in your flesh. The true recognition of the “I AM” is the acknowledgment of the Self within you. God, the Father, eternally subsisting in His own “Being”, sends forth all forms of His will. Likewise, all forms return to the formless One, according to an irreversible law.
You, the one man, can comprehend the infinite Self within you by a boundless expansion of your conception of God. When the Spirit, the source of all energy and life within you is awakened to, then you have begun your home-coming like the prodigal son. You thus return to the Universal “Being” as a son coming home to his father. The more we study the Bible the more we are awakened to that, particularly through meditating on that word. What the bible says and the Spirit resident in you are the same, because the bible is reflecting the Spirit within you. Just as a mirror reflects the Image of your face, the word reflects the “image” of the Spirit within you. Since the Spirit is not tangible for the mirror and can only be discussed by describing its attributes, these attributes are described in the written word – The Bible.
The bible gives a better reflection, if it is read and meditated upon with a view of its allegorical nature. An allegory is a story, poem, or picture which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning and that is why meditating is important. Meditating on the Word is like attuning your mind (read Imagination or feelings) to sense the Spirit within you. In other words it is tuning your attention and eyes inwardly. By going inward--we become greater in our knowledge and comprehension of the mysteries contained in the bible. By going inward we visit the Kingdom of God, where there is all that is good and lovely. In Luke 17:20-21 it says... “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither s-hall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you. Therefore the road inward is the road to greatness and peace, the Royal Road of the Ancients, and for all men who desire to become united with the Supreme Cause, the root and substance of all.
Psalm 74:22 Arise, O God, defend your cause; remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day! This is a message to the I AM within you, to inspire your mind to awaken, by your inward attention to Him, in spite of all the outward thoughts and beliefs that state otherwise, i.e. that make it look impossible or foolish for you to think or become aware that God actually dwells in you and that you can be one with Him. Psalm 82:8 Arise, O God; judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations! This is a direct instruction to shake off all false beliefs that make you unconscious of God who dwells in you. The earth is the world that you have created within your imagination, and you need to get rid of everything that subdues you and arise as a king to take charge of that world by working up the correct image of whatever is attributable to God. What are the nations? The nations in this case are whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things---Philippians 4:8
Rebirth or to be born again means to ascend inwardly from the lesser to the greater by an inner realization or awakening to the Spirit within you, or by the lifting up of consciousness from one step to a higher which is in you. It means the dying of the old mindset to awaken to the truth and to assume your position as a result. The old man dies and the new man is revealed. The old heaven passes away to reveal a new heaven. Rev 21:1-3 says “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God”
The consciousness, “Being” lifted up by contemplation, dwells on the premise that I am now the “Being” I long to be, and to make it real I must feel it. This realization is an inner awareness of the new state of consciousness or rebirth.
Have you ever observed that there is not a single tune that was ever played that any other man cannot replay. If it was made by man, it can be remade by man or even destroyed or unmade by another man. Take the case of locks or defence systems; if they were made by human hands then they can be beaten by other homo-sapiens. Therefore anything that has ever been felt by any holy man, any other man can feel. There are no facts or secrets hidden in the dim past that any man cannot bring to light. You are the only “Being” there is.
You have a memory of all that has passed; consequently all tones, moods, vibrations, Knowledge and wisdom are within you. There is no language that ever was spoken that you cannot speak. There is no voice that you cannot reproduce, because all is within you.
YOU have always lived and that is why in the bible in (John 8:58) Jesus said that “Before Abraham was, I AM.” I AM is present and infinite “When all things cease to be, I AM.” You, man, wrote the Bible! You may have forgotten it, but if you meditate on its passages, the subjective self within you will reveal to your conscious mind what you meant, when YOU wrote it thousands of years ago. This sounds crazy, but you have to see things this way and life begins to make sense from the dimension of the bible.
Time is an illusion, it gives a false impression; God (I AM) is the eternal NOW. Thousands of years are as an instant. Aeons (a period of a thousand million years)are as a day --- (2Pe 3:8) says But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Therefore reader, shed now the belief in time and the falsehood that we have to come back again and again to this earth plane (re-incarnation)--one time as John, another visit as Mary--in order to gain more experience, to perfect ourselves and become as Jesus, the Christ. Incarnation is defined as the embodiment of God the Son in human flesh as Jesus Christ who before the bible was written is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Col 1:15)
There is this false belief that it is almost impossible for us to become as Jesus, or Moses, or Elijah in one lifetime; that it takes several lifetimes; that for society to reproduce such a person, or such talent or such character takes a long time although such people come up once in a while. That is why when Jesus asked His disciples who they thought he was in Mat 16:14 they said, some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. This was because they saw all the elements of the past prophets in Him.
In other beliefs there is what is called “Karma” which is the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as affecting their future fate. In other words, it is said that we must pay back (expiate) for the sins and crimes committed in past lives before we can be purified. But that is because of the absence of knowledge of the great payment and sacrifice made by Jesus (us in the past) on the cross. Some state that it is almost impossible to change certain physical conditions in this life, particularly, if one happened to be born with a hereditary disease or deformity.
This teaching is false and a contradiction of everything the Bible teaches, namely, Jer. 32:27 says “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for Me?” and Jer. 30:17 says “I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, says the Lord.” Then Ps. 103:3,5 says “...Who heals all thy diseases; Who satisfies thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Also Hosea 13:14 which says “I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death.” . Jesus walked on water, I have heard of people who have teleported from one place to another in a flash, seen in movies people floating in the air without any aid, and encountered those who have raised others from death.
A cripple whose limbs are restored is not instantly healed because of his or your belief. Likewise, a man’s whose leg is amputated, the reason he does not grow another leg is because his father and mother, religion, education, superstition, carnal reasoning, Medical textbooks, plus tradition and race belief, have all contributed to the false belief and teaching he received since childhood. He holds a firm conviction within himself now that God cannot grow another leg for him. He firmly believes that nothing can be done for him except to wear an artificial leg. So is it with the fact that even though many can raise the dead nobody can attest to ever walking on water. Luke 8:48 says “Thy faith hath made thee whole.”
Regarding the belief of some people that we must suffer for errors of the past or for sins Committed centuries ago –i.e. Karma or so called cause and effect; there is no basis for this false concept. If you believe that you must suffer for something you have done, according to your faith be it done unto you. Mat 9:29. It is all based on belief whether negative or positive. For a person suffering with karma I give you 1Jn 2:2 which says Jesus is the propitiation (appeasement) for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. And now Jesus is no longer an external factor but dwells within us, or rather we now have His very nature, essence, presence and pattern or “Being” within us (Emmanuel – God with us).
The only loss, limitation, restriction or evil in the world is our belief in loss, our belief in limitation, our belief in restriction and our belief in evil or disease. This is known as “the son of perdition” or sense of loss spoken of in the Bible. If you still have doubts I will give you these verses
(Isaiah 1:18). “Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
(Hebrews 10:17). “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”
(Ps. 86:5). “For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.”
As you read this article just pause a bit and ponder about a God who says, “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you,” When you meditate on this scripture you will realize by necessity that the great I AM, due to His greater Love, also blots out all of the past. He wipes away all tears, and forgives you immediately. Can you imagine a God asking you to forgive those who trespass against you, and then in the same breath refusing to forgive Himself (I AM)? (Ps. 91:15). “He shall call upon me, and I will answer him.” (Isaiah 43:25) “I, even I, am he that blotteth out all transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.”
Man completely detaches himself from the past by partaking of a great psychological and mystical feast of peace and happiness by detaching from the works of the law. Realizing the presence of God within him, he rises in consciousness to the joyous conviction that he is NOW the “Being” he longs to be. Having fixed this state within him, a silent inner knowing possesses him; all former doubts and fears pass away and shall be remembered no more. By sustaining this silent inner feeling that which he felt inwardly becomes expressed outwardly. To be an expression of anything first be impressed with it inwardly. Be impressed with the knowledge that the great I AM dwells in you and that any barrier preventing expression in the body has been removed by the Sin sacrifice on the cross --- Jesus Christ, the undeserved favour of God (Grace of God) . Today we are that Blessed man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Rom 4:8
Some Assuring Verses;
Rom 5:1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: .
Rom 8:30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Gal 5:4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.
2Co 3:6 who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the Spirit: for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.
There is only ONE Spirit, who is the source of all Life and He has existed from the very beginning and He is outside time. While many bodies are replicated from one Original- Adam’s Body, only One Life, One Spirit has existed all the time in those reproduced bodies. Let’s take the life of a bean seed, just as one bean seed emanates from another bean seed, if you go back into time to the very beginning, you will trace the life of beans to the first bean seed to be created, that germinated and reproduced itself since then. In that bean seed there is the life force that gives it the ability to reproduce after its own kind and the source of that life force is the Spirit, who is the Source of all Life, and is coined by many names although the Universal understanding is God the Creator. This Spirit is the Life source behind all living things, through all and in all. He comes from a formless state into whatever living creature is made, like the bean seed.
“I AM the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside Me.” (Isaiah 45:5).
Based on the above background, it means you, the reader, are the one and only being (only Spirit) there is. When you say, “I AM,” that means the sum-total of all the personalities in the world. All other conceptions are projections in space of the one being, yourself. Unfortunately ever since the fall, Man has always negated or chosen to forget the existence of this creative force or the source of life within him and has all the while insisted that the Spirit (God) dwells without and not within. In the end this force has been docile or remained dormant inside man, like a dormant volcanic mountain. Such a scenario does not mean that the mountain can never erupt, it’s just inactive.
In the Bible --the “I AM” is constantly used in phrases to describe God such as,
(John 14:6). “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
(John 11:25). “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”
(Ex. 3:14). “I am that I am.”
(John 6:48). I am that bread of life
These and similar sayings shine forth in all their true brilliance the moment we see that Jesus, the Christ, was not speaking of Himself personally, but of the principle of “Being” inherent in all mankind. Until you realize that the “Being” of Jesus so detailed and intricately described in the bible is actually you, then you cannot comprehend the bible when it says that ...as He is, so are we in this world (1John 4:17). It means you are still asleep and as a result subject to the mould of the world, the interpretations of men which are all outward. And that your life is based on the tree of knowledge of good and evil rather than the tree of life as described in Genesis 2:9 which says “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil”. Wherever you see Jesus being talked about in the bible, understand it is you the reader (the 2nd Adam) being discussed.
God continues to exist in flesh (effectively making our bodies His temple), and the only replicating element in this infinite existence is the Flesh, but the Spirit all along is the same. That is why we are called Human “Beings” not doings. It is God in Human form, even if the flesh may be inert or un-awakened to this element. Jesus is the full manifestation of an awakened “Being” and that makes Him the fullest example of the Spirit in full control of the flesh. That is why John 1:16 says of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace. This is the same being described, although right now it is in this flesh of you the reader. Suffice it to say that, you must believe first, in order to understand this dimension of life.
What Truth man has perpetually failed to see is that there is only one man, for the same reason that there is only one God. God and man are one John 14:11 says –“I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” Mathematically you cannot divide or multiply a value of one by itself, an d get an answer other than one. Infinity cannot be divided or multiplied. The seeming divisions (because they are not physical but logical) that manifest as divergent beliefs opinions and religions are the illusions of boundaries build and defined by men.
Our focus is to awaken and attune to that innermost Self which is the pure life generating Spirit, and which is not subject to any condition(s) whatsoever. We feel that we are conditioned by time and space, but these conditions have no place in the essential “Being” who is now resident in your flesh. The true recognition of the “I AM” is the acknowledgment of the Self within you. God, the Father, eternally subsisting in His own “Being”, sends forth all forms of His will. Likewise, all forms return to the formless One, according to an irreversible law.
You, the one man, can comprehend the infinite Self within you by a boundless expansion of your conception of God. When the Spirit, the source of all energy and life within you is awakened to, then you have begun your home-coming like the prodigal son. You thus return to the Universal “Being” as a son coming home to his father. The more we study the Bible the more we are awakened to that, particularly through meditating on that word. What the bible says and the Spirit resident in you are the same, because the bible is reflecting the Spirit within you. Just as a mirror reflects the Image of your face, the word reflects the “image” of the Spirit within you. Since the Spirit is not tangible for the mirror and can only be discussed by describing its attributes, these attributes are described in the written word – The Bible.
The bible gives a better reflection, if it is read and meditated upon with a view of its allegorical nature. An allegory is a story, poem, or picture which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning and that is why meditating is important. Meditating on the Word is like attuning your mind (read Imagination or feelings) to sense the Spirit within you. In other words it is tuning your attention and eyes inwardly. By going inward--we become greater in our knowledge and comprehension of the mysteries contained in the bible. By going inward we visit the Kingdom of God, where there is all that is good and lovely. In Luke 17:20-21 it says... “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither s-hall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you. Therefore the road inward is the road to greatness and peace, the Royal Road of the Ancients, and for all men who desire to become united with the Supreme Cause, the root and substance of all.
Psalm 74:22 Arise, O God, defend your cause; remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day! This is a message to the I AM within you, to inspire your mind to awaken, by your inward attention to Him, in spite of all the outward thoughts and beliefs that state otherwise, i.e. that make it look impossible or foolish for you to think or become aware that God actually dwells in you and that you can be one with Him. Psalm 82:8 Arise, O God; judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations! This is a direct instruction to shake off all false beliefs that make you unconscious of God who dwells in you. The earth is the world that you have created within your imagination, and you need to get rid of everything that subdues you and arise as a king to take charge of that world by working up the correct image of whatever is attributable to God. What are the nations? The nations in this case are whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things---Philippians 4:8
Rebirth or to be born again means to ascend inwardly from the lesser to the greater by an inner realization or awakening to the Spirit within you, or by the lifting up of consciousness from one step to a higher which is in you. It means the dying of the old mindset to awaken to the truth and to assume your position as a result. The old man dies and the new man is revealed. The old heaven passes away to reveal a new heaven. Rev 21:1-3 says “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God”
The consciousness, “Being” lifted up by contemplation, dwells on the premise that I am now the “Being” I long to be, and to make it real I must feel it. This realization is an inner awareness of the new state of consciousness or rebirth.
Have you ever observed that there is not a single tune that was ever played that any other man cannot replay. If it was made by man, it can be remade by man or even destroyed or unmade by another man. Take the case of locks or defence systems; if they were made by human hands then they can be beaten by other homo-sapiens. Therefore anything that has ever been felt by any holy man, any other man can feel. There are no facts or secrets hidden in the dim past that any man cannot bring to light. You are the only “Being” there is.
You have a memory of all that has passed; consequently all tones, moods, vibrations, Knowledge and wisdom are within you. There is no language that ever was spoken that you cannot speak. There is no voice that you cannot reproduce, because all is within you.
YOU have always lived and that is why in the bible in (John 8:58) Jesus said that “Before Abraham was, I AM.” I AM is present and infinite “When all things cease to be, I AM.” You, man, wrote the Bible! You may have forgotten it, but if you meditate on its passages, the subjective self within you will reveal to your conscious mind what you meant, when YOU wrote it thousands of years ago. This sounds crazy, but you have to see things this way and life begins to make sense from the dimension of the bible.
Time is an illusion, it gives a false impression; God (I AM) is the eternal NOW. Thousands of years are as an instant. Aeons (a period of a thousand million years)are as a day --- (2Pe 3:8) says But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Therefore reader, shed now the belief in time and the falsehood that we have to come back again and again to this earth plane (re-incarnation)--one time as John, another visit as Mary--in order to gain more experience, to perfect ourselves and become as Jesus, the Christ. Incarnation is defined as the embodiment of God the Son in human flesh as Jesus Christ who before the bible was written is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Col 1:15)
There is this false belief that it is almost impossible for us to become as Jesus, or Moses, or Elijah in one lifetime; that it takes several lifetimes; that for society to reproduce such a person, or such talent or such character takes a long time although such people come up once in a while. That is why when Jesus asked His disciples who they thought he was in Mat 16:14 they said, some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. This was because they saw all the elements of the past prophets in Him.
In other beliefs there is what is called “Karma” which is the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as affecting their future fate. In other words, it is said that we must pay back (expiate) for the sins and crimes committed in past lives before we can be purified. But that is because of the absence of knowledge of the great payment and sacrifice made by Jesus (us in the past) on the cross. Some state that it is almost impossible to change certain physical conditions in this life, particularly, if one happened to be born with a hereditary disease or deformity.
This teaching is false and a contradiction of everything the Bible teaches, namely, Jer. 32:27 says “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for Me?” and Jer. 30:17 says “I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, says the Lord.” Then Ps. 103:3,5 says “...Who heals all thy diseases; Who satisfies thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Also Hosea 13:14 which says “I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death.” . Jesus walked on water, I have heard of people who have teleported from one place to another in a flash, seen in movies people floating in the air without any aid, and encountered those who have raised others from death.
A cripple whose limbs are restored is not instantly healed because of his or your belief. Likewise, a man’s whose leg is amputated, the reason he does not grow another leg is because his father and mother, religion, education, superstition, carnal reasoning, Medical textbooks, plus tradition and race belief, have all contributed to the false belief and teaching he received since childhood. He holds a firm conviction within himself now that God cannot grow another leg for him. He firmly believes that nothing can be done for him except to wear an artificial leg. So is it with the fact that even though many can raise the dead nobody can attest to ever walking on water. Luke 8:48 says “Thy faith hath made thee whole.”
Regarding the belief of some people that we must suffer for errors of the past or for sins Committed centuries ago –i.e. Karma or so called cause and effect; there is no basis for this false concept. If you believe that you must suffer for something you have done, according to your faith be it done unto you. Mat 9:29. It is all based on belief whether negative or positive. For a person suffering with karma I give you 1Jn 2:2 which says Jesus is the propitiation (appeasement) for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. And now Jesus is no longer an external factor but dwells within us, or rather we now have His very nature, essence, presence and pattern or “Being” within us (Emmanuel – God with us).
The only loss, limitation, restriction or evil in the world is our belief in loss, our belief in limitation, our belief in restriction and our belief in evil or disease. This is known as “the son of perdition” or sense of loss spoken of in the Bible. If you still have doubts I will give you these verses
(Isaiah 1:18). “Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
(Hebrews 10:17). “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”
(Ps. 86:5). “For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.”
As you read this article just pause a bit and ponder about a God who says, “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you,” When you meditate on this scripture you will realize by necessity that the great I AM, due to His greater Love, also blots out all of the past. He wipes away all tears, and forgives you immediately. Can you imagine a God asking you to forgive those who trespass against you, and then in the same breath refusing to forgive Himself (I AM)? (Ps. 91:15). “He shall call upon me, and I will answer him.” (Isaiah 43:25) “I, even I, am he that blotteth out all transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.”
Man completely detaches himself from the past by partaking of a great psychological and mystical feast of peace and happiness by detaching from the works of the law. Realizing the presence of God within him, he rises in consciousness to the joyous conviction that he is NOW the “Being” he longs to be. Having fixed this state within him, a silent inner knowing possesses him; all former doubts and fears pass away and shall be remembered no more. By sustaining this silent inner feeling that which he felt inwardly becomes expressed outwardly. To be an expression of anything first be impressed with it inwardly. Be impressed with the knowledge that the great I AM dwells in you and that any barrier preventing expression in the body has been removed by the Sin sacrifice on the cross --- Jesus Christ, the undeserved favour of God (Grace of God) . Today we are that Blessed man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Rom 4:8
Some Assuring Verses;
Rom 5:1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: .
Rom 8:30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Gal 5:4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.
2Co 3:6 who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the Spirit: for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Faith Is Based On Knowledge
"Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." (2 Peter 1:2-4)
These verses say that ALL THINGS that pertain unto life and godliness are given unto us through THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. And certainly, faith must be one of those things because without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6). So faith must come through the knowledge of God. That's the reason Romans 10:17 says faith comes by hearing the Word of God. The amount of faith that you operate in is directly proportional to the revelation knowledge that you have of God through His Word. Your understanding of how much He loves you certainly influences how much authority you operate in as well as the anointing and the gifts which are based on His Love. Faith Works by Love.
Many people have found it very difficult to operate in faith. That is because they either don't have the real knowledge of God's Word in them, or they have let the Word slip and be choked by the knowledge of the world. Fear comes through carnal knowledge, just as faith and all things that pertain unto life come through godly knowledge. Most Christians today (even Spirit-filled Christians) are full of the knowledge about how to operate in Satan's system or the worldly system but are really deficient in the knowledge it takes to prosper in God's system. So, it is not really a faith problem that exists, but it is rather a Word problem.
These verses say that ALL THINGS that pertain unto life and godliness are given unto us through THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. And certainly, faith must be one of those things because without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6). So faith must come through the knowledge of God. That's the reason Romans 10:17 says faith comes by hearing the Word of God. The amount of faith that you operate in is directly proportional to the revelation knowledge that you have of God through His Word. Your understanding of how much He loves you certainly influences how much authority you operate in as well as the anointing and the gifts which are based on His Love. Faith Works by Love.
Many people have found it very difficult to operate in faith. That is because they either don't have the real knowledge of God's Word in them, or they have let the Word slip and be choked by the knowledge of the world. Fear comes through carnal knowledge, just as faith and all things that pertain unto life come through godly knowledge. Most Christians today (even Spirit-filled Christians) are full of the knowledge about how to operate in Satan's system or the worldly system but are really deficient in the knowledge it takes to prosper in God's system. So, it is not really a faith problem that exists, but it is rather a Word problem.
Typically as we grow, men’s traditions, culture, school, peer pressure and the world’s system are exerted onto us and into our lives so much so that we have to shun God’s way of thinking and adopt worldly ways. For example if what the word says about the children of God and the exploits they are capable of, based on the complete work of Christ, is anything to go by; then more time would be spent trying to unlock those age old secrets that enable us to flow in the fullness of God. Unfortunately more resources, more attention and everything continue to be poured into worldly ways like the education system and so called professionalism and skills, and efforts to stifle the knowledge of God. In the end we become so full of the worldly system and have little in comparison regarding the knowledge of God. To know God is Eternal life (John17:3). Even when we receive salvation the main influence on our lives is the underlying philosophy that shapes our thinking and sad to the dominant philosophy whether you are saved or not is largely worldly or put bluntly anti Christ thinking.
Knowing God is not a one days learning process. There is a lot of unlearning to do of the world’s ways and a lot of cultivation to do in learning God’s ways. This is so much so that you have to do it to the extent of undoing a lot of unbelief and instituting a lot of belief in God’s ways. The nature of the world has influenced our thinking so much so that we think it is natural, yet the bible puts it clearly that as sons of God, ours is to produce what Our Fathers Character is. A hen begets Chicks, just as a dog begets puppies, just as a goat begets Kids, just as a Lion begets cubs, and JUST AS GOD begets gods through the supernatural birth- salvation. The bible says we are gods according to Psalm 82:6, Isaiah 41:23 and John 10:34...
Galatians 5:22 states that faith is a part of the fruit of the Spirit. Have you ever seen a plant struggle to bring forth fruit? Have you ever heard a vine moan and groan and complain about how hard it is to produce grapes? Have ever seen a child saying "I confess with my mouth in Jesus name that my mother will breast feed me.." Of course not! It's the nature of a vine to produce grapes, its in the nature of a mother to breast feed and milk will come whether she likes it or not. Likewise If the vine is protected and given nourishment, it will automatically produce fruit, unless it's starved or attacked by some outside force. So it is with the Christian, Faith will automatically be the product of our abiding in the Word, which is Jesus (John 1:1, 15:1-7). Where there is faith, there is a bridge between the supernatural and the natural. What is unseen automatically manifests with faith as the currency or medium.
The problem has been that the knowledge of God's Word has not been abiding in us, or the carnal knowledge of the world has choked the Word of God that was there. You cannot serve two masters (Matt. 6:24). A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. He cannot receive anything from the Lord (James 1:7-8). You cannot operate in faith and unbelief at the same time and expect results. Two cannot walk together unless they be in agreement - (Amos 3:3). There has got to be single-mindedness.
Matthew 6:22 gives us the promise that if the eye is single, we will be full of light. That means that if all your attention is focused on God through His Word, then the only thing that you will be full of is God and what His Word produces. If you are single minded on cultivating the knowledge of God, then His character is what you will radiate. This is a Bible law that is repeated in Romans 8:6, which says, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." If we are experiencing anything but life and peace, it is because we are carnally minded. You cannot have life and peace without the knowledge of God. On the other hand, you cannot experience any form of death without the knowledge of the devil and his system.
The carnal knowledge that we dwell upon in our thought lives is Satan's in-road to us. I am convinced that one of the main reasons that the first men that walked upon this earth lived to be as old as 969 years is because they didn't know how to die. They didn't even have a family until they were over 300 years old! They didn't know that there was supposed to be a flu season every year. It took many years for Satan to pervert the knowledge that was in man so that he would accept defeat. Most of our battles could be avoided if we would just be wise concerning that which is good and simple concerning that which is evil (Rom. 16:19).
Galatians 5:22 states that faith is a part of the fruit of the Spirit. Have you ever seen a plant struggle to bring forth fruit? Have you ever heard a vine moan and groan and complain about how hard it is to produce grapes? Have ever seen a child saying "I confess with my mouth in Jesus name that my mother will breast feed me.." Of course not! It's the nature of a vine to produce grapes, its in the nature of a mother to breast feed and milk will come whether she likes it or not. Likewise If the vine is protected and given nourishment, it will automatically produce fruit, unless it's starved or attacked by some outside force. So it is with the Christian, Faith will automatically be the product of our abiding in the Word, which is Jesus (John 1:1, 15:1-7). Where there is faith, there is a bridge between the supernatural and the natural. What is unseen automatically manifests with faith as the currency or medium.
The problem has been that the knowledge of God's Word has not been abiding in us, or the carnal knowledge of the world has choked the Word of God that was there. You cannot serve two masters (Matt. 6:24). A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. He cannot receive anything from the Lord (James 1:7-8). You cannot operate in faith and unbelief at the same time and expect results. Two cannot walk together unless they be in agreement - (Amos 3:3). There has got to be single-mindedness.
Matthew 6:22 gives us the promise that if the eye is single, we will be full of light. That means that if all your attention is focused on God through His Word, then the only thing that you will be full of is God and what His Word produces. If you are single minded on cultivating the knowledge of God, then His character is what you will radiate. This is a Bible law that is repeated in Romans 8:6, which says, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." If we are experiencing anything but life and peace, it is because we are carnally minded. You cannot have life and peace without the knowledge of God. On the other hand, you cannot experience any form of death without the knowledge of the devil and his system.
The carnal knowledge that we dwell upon in our thought lives is Satan's in-road to us. I am convinced that one of the main reasons that the first men that walked upon this earth lived to be as old as 969 years is because they didn't know how to die. They didn't even have a family until they were over 300 years old! They didn't know that there was supposed to be a flu season every year. It took many years for Satan to pervert the knowledge that was in man so that he would accept defeat. Most of our battles could be avoided if we would just be wise concerning that which is good and simple concerning that which is evil (Rom. 16:19).
The worldly system is the way it is – full of influence because Satan has cultivated so much time in corrupting what God built beautifully in place. Fortunately Jesus through the Cross and His Shed blood began by restoring us Supernaturally through copying (replicating) His Spirit in each person that believes Him- (John1:12, John1:16). In that way His power which is now resident in us is sufficient to “de-cultivate” much of what Satan has spent all these years cultivating. However, it takes the renewal of the mind, and cultivating and establishing a love relationship with God, in which once we are rooted then God through us can do exceedingly and abundantly above all we think or expect. This is the Grace of God that is available to all Men.
Hebrews 11:15 says that if Abraham had been mindful of the country that he came out of, he might have had opportunity, or might have been tempted, to have returned. But, since he refused to think on Satan's knowledge, he could not be tempted to turn back. Praise God! If Abraham could do it, we can do it too. Second Corinthians 10:4-5 says we can bring every thought into captivity and under the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But, since our minds have already been grounded in the knowledge of this world, it is impossible to just cast that carnal mind out. You have to be thinking on something. Romans 12:2 says, "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." Our minds have to be renewed, and that is done by meditating on the knowledge of God as revealed in His Word.
Hebrews 11:15 says that if Abraham had been mindful of the country that he came out of, he might have had opportunity, or might have been tempted, to have returned. But, since he refused to think on Satan's knowledge, he could not be tempted to turn back. Praise God! If Abraham could do it, we can do it too. Second Corinthians 10:4-5 says we can bring every thought into captivity and under the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But, since our minds have already been grounded in the knowledge of this world, it is impossible to just cast that carnal mind out. You have to be thinking on something. Romans 12:2 says, "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." Our minds have to be renewed, and that is done by meditating on the knowledge of God as revealed in His Word.
Your life is similar to a computer. It simply acts upon the knowledge put into it. If all you have is carnal knowledge, then all you can be is carnal. But praise God, you can reprogram yourself with the Word of God. Your body is like the hardware, the operating system is the mind or soul, your spirit is the new file that was copied, that converts you into a son, that has the exact same attributes that Jesus has, that is the new spirit A.K.A the new creation, A.K.A the new man, that’s the one that is born again and is exactly like God and has His fullness all of that dwelling in you bodily. What you need is to constantly renew your mind and that spirit (the new man) will execute, like an application file in a computer system. in the Computer world it is not when a file is copied that the application is installed or runs, it is when it is double clicked executed that it installs on a computer and then that computer is said to run that application or possess that program. This file has all the functionalities pertaining to life and godliness of that computer.
You are not incapable of living a life of faith. Quite the contrary, if you have been born again, you have already been given faith as a part of the fruit of the Spirit. But, you can't function in it if you don't know that it's there or if you don't have knowledge of the laws that govern it. The laws of aerodynamics have been in existence since creation, but man didn't have knowledge of them until recently. Many people scoffed at the idea of flying, just as many people ridicule the faith message today. They used to say, "If God meant for man to fly, He would have given man wings." We've seen that assumption proven false. It wasn't God who was keeping us from flying, it was our ignorance of the laws that govern flight. It hasn't been God who failed to give us faith, we have all been given the measure of faith (Rom. 12:3), but God's people have been perishing because of a lack of knowledge of how that faith works.
Mankind didn't learn how to fly overnight. There have been many failures, but now no one doubts that the laws of aerodynamics work. You won't learn all the laws of faith instantly either and you may fall flat on your face a few times before you start seeing faith produce as it should. But, the law of faith, which created everything, is a thousand times surer than the laws of aerodynamics. The knowledge of God and how faith works is hidden for you, not from you, in the Word of God. Pray Ephesians 1:15-23 with me, as a prayer to receive the knowledge of God. Believe that you receive, and watch faith begin to be produced in your life.
"Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all." (Eph. 1:15-23)
You are not incapable of living a life of faith. Quite the contrary, if you have been born again, you have already been given faith as a part of the fruit of the Spirit. But, you can't function in it if you don't know that it's there or if you don't have knowledge of the laws that govern it. The laws of aerodynamics have been in existence since creation, but man didn't have knowledge of them until recently. Many people scoffed at the idea of flying, just as many people ridicule the faith message today. They used to say, "If God meant for man to fly, He would have given man wings." We've seen that assumption proven false. It wasn't God who was keeping us from flying, it was our ignorance of the laws that govern flight. It hasn't been God who failed to give us faith, we have all been given the measure of faith (Rom. 12:3), but God's people have been perishing because of a lack of knowledge of how that faith works.
Mankind didn't learn how to fly overnight. There have been many failures, but now no one doubts that the laws of aerodynamics work. You won't learn all the laws of faith instantly either and you may fall flat on your face a few times before you start seeing faith produce as it should. But, the law of faith, which created everything, is a thousand times surer than the laws of aerodynamics. The knowledge of God and how faith works is hidden for you, not from you, in the Word of God. Pray Ephesians 1:15-23 with me, as a prayer to receive the knowledge of God. Believe that you receive, and watch faith begin to be produced in your life.
"Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all." (Eph. 1:15-23)
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Xmas - When The Natural Became The Supernatural
Christmas is a very Interesting time, because the Word indeed became Flesh as prophesied.
I am so glad that I received this revelation that Christmas is a time;
When the Supernatural was packaged as the natural.
When the Supernatural was birthed into the natural.
When the Supernatural Kingdom manifests into the Flesh,
When God dwells amongst Men, even to this very day.
When the Word advanced to the level of being flesh.
When Men's reasoning failed to comprehend the things of God, because they are too good to make sense to his carnal mind,
When God decided to show us this unbelievable kind of Love through His Son.
When it’s important to know that God deeply and truly loves you.
When we believe that, that which is natural by faith can take on the form of the supernatural,
when the natural man received the chance of becoming supernatural through faith in the complete work of Christ.
When Jesus Was Born Into The Natural Realm That You Through Faith Might Be Born Into The Supernatural Realm Spiritually.
when we became the righteousness of God through Christ.
When It’s All About The Newness Of Life And Of The Spirit That You Have Received As A Born Again believer.
When our authority and dominion over the devil and his cohorts was restored permanently through The Name Above all Names Jesus,
when we learn that God shifted residence from Heaven to dwell inside us, in our Spirit-man.
that ..as He is, so are we in this World ----1 John4:17
that...And of His FULLNESS have we all received, and grace for grace.-----------John 1:16
that as Psalm 82:6 says "“I said, ‘You are “gods”; you are all sons of the Most High.’"
that as Isaiah 41:23 says - "Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that ye may know that YE ARE GODS...
The bible is a spiritual Mirror, you can only know how you look like spiritually by looking at the word, not your physical reflection, and basically through the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Bible is telling you that you are exactly identical to Jesus Spiritually, if you are born again. The Fullness of God dwells in you physically and bodily. I pray that nothing will cloud your mind this season to see this, that your eyes may be opened in this season that you may aspire to be grounded and rooted in the Love of God, that you may experience the fullness of God's Love, that it may not be only mental assent, but that an experiential knowledge, so that God's desire may be fulfilled in you just as His word says, that "He Loved the World (with you included in the world), that He gave His only begotten Son that Whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal Life(which is to know God).
Eternal life is defined in John 17:3 --- as 3"This is eternal life, that they may know You, (A)the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom (B)You have sent.
Knowing in the Biblical sense is having Intimacy or intercourse. In this case it is Spiritual intercourse or intimacy or affection, Just as Adam knew his wife Eve and she was with Child... that kind of deep knowing.
I pray that during this season as you ponder on birth of Christ, that Jesus may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you will , be rooted and established in God's love, that you may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, so that you may know this love that surpasses knowledge (as an experience) so that when it is something you have experienced—that you may be filled to the measure of all the FULLNESS OF GOD.
I pray that we wont forget Him who is more than able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,
Friday, July 30, 2010
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: How to Flow in Them
Romans 12:6
• Prophecy
• Ministering
• Teaching
• Exhortation
• Giving with simplicity
• Ruling with diligence
• Showing mercy with Cheerfulness
1CORINTHIANS12:8-12
The Gift of;
• Word of Wisdom
• Word of Knowledge
• Faith
• Healing
• Working of Miracles
• Prophecy
• Discerning of Spirits
• Divers kinds of Tongues
• Interpretation of Tongues
I believe that one of the biggest reasons that the body of Christ hasn't made a greater impact on our generation today like in the book of Acts is Discerning of our failure to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Without a doubt, Jesus and the first apostles used the gifts like a bell, calling men to their message and confirming that God was truly the One speaking through them.
Hebrews 2:3-4 says,
"How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?" The Lord bore witness to the accuracy of their message through miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
In Mark 16:17-18, Jesus said all true believers would flow in the miraculous: "And these signs will follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
If a Christian's life isn't supernatural, it's superficial. If its possible for you to explain away every event in your life then you are in the natural not in the supernatural . This is a radical statement going by todays trend in the church.
Mark goes on to say that messages based in God's Word would be confirmed by signs following: "So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen."
Jesus even said, "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not" (John 10:37). That's another strong statement.
If we were to apply that standard to ministers today, that means most wouldn't be believed. The vast majority of preaching done in the name of the Lord today is without the power of the Holy Spirit manifest through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This is not the way the Lord intended it to be.
The "main line" denominations have developed doctrines to cope with this obvious discrepancy. And many church goers having no experience of these things think its okay to do without them.
However, regardless of the rationale, it's absurd to think that we can be effective without the power of the Holy Spirit confirming the preaching of God's Word. If Jesus and the early apostles needed their preaching validated, how can we do any less? "signs and wonders in a sense are God's trademark of approval, otherwise that preaching is just cheap talk.
Even the non-denominational churches have fallen away from ministering in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The gifts that operate in most "Spirit-filled" churches are simply words of exhortation or prophecy, but the bible reveals much more.
The Lord has used the gifts of the Holy Spirit mightily in my life and ministry to confirm His Word. There are countless times when people were still skeptical after hearing me teach, but the demonstration of God's power through the gifts turned them into believers. It's like the teaching fills their mouths with God's Word, then the gifts of the Holy Spirit slap them on the back and make them swallow it. Hallelujah!
One of the most important steps to flowing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit is to earnestly desire them.
• Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:31, "But covet earnestly the best gifts."
• He repeated that thought in 1 Corinthians 14:1 when he said, "Desire spiritual gifts." Simply put, for as long as you can live without flowing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you will. You have to seek these gifts with all your heart, as its not a half hearted experience (Jer. 29:13). "And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."
It's also very important to understand that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are always flowing. God doesn't turn them "on" and "off." We are the ones who are "on" or "off." That's a startling statement to many people and one that verges on blasphemy to some, but it's true. The Lord is always ready to flow through us in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
It's just like praying in tongues. We don't have to wait for the anointing of the Holy Spirit to come on us to speak in tongues. We can pray in tongues at any time. It's not us turning on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is always on and giving us the ability to speak in tongues. Therefore, whenever we turn ourselves on, the gift of tongues is there to allow us to communicate with our heavenly Father. Praise the Lord! That's the way it is with all the gifts.
One time when Andrew Womack was teaching along these lines in Charis Bible College. One of the students said, "So, you are saying that you can flow in the gifts of the Holy Spirit at any time?" Andrfew said , "That's right and I'll prove it to you." He then started down each row and just started "reading the students' mail. He was telling them things that had to be coming from the Holy Spirit. It was awesome.
No one has received everything that the Holy Spirit has for them. Therefore, the Lord is always seeking to release more to us through His supernatural gifts. Whenever we put ourselves in a mode to be His channel, His gifts will flow. The old "Pentecostal" doctrine of the anointing coming and going is not a New Testament truth. First John 2:27 says, "But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you."
Another great truth about flowing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit is what John Osteen called "the divine flow." This is based on, "God is love"
(1 John 4:8). --"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." Therefore, whenever we discern the love of God flowing through us toward someone, God is reaching out to them through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. All we have to do is follow that flow through faith.
Once when Andrew Wommack was pastoring a little church in Pritchett, Colorado, his heart just went out to a woman in the back of the room. He'd never seen her before, and there was nothing natural that drew him to her. It was just the love of God flowing through him to her. Because of that love alone, he told her that God had a word for her. Andrew didn't have one single word to say to her, but he knew God's love was flowing; and therefore, God and His gifts were flowing to her. So Womack just started by saying, "God loves you." God then flooded his mind with things to minister to her.
It was a long word from the Lord, but Andrew specifically told her about how she was grieving over the loss of someone and was confused about why God allowed it. Andrew kept saying, "It wasn't God that allowed it. It was the Destroyer." He said that a number of times. She broke down in tears and was really ministered to.
After the service, she told him that she had just lost her son to leukemia. They believed that God allowed this disease. But just before her son died, her husband saw this huge demon over their town, which the Lord told him was named the Destroyer. They didn't know how to interpret that until Andrew spoke to them through the gifts of the Holy Spirit and put it all in order. They were set free.
This was the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom in operation. God gave Andrew the knowledge of what had happened and then gave words of wisdom to instruct them on how to deal with it. This all came because Andrfew followed the love that I felt in my heart.
This has happened to us all, but most of the time we don't understand this is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and we miss an opportunity. According to Andrew he learned this the hard way.
There was a man who had been Andrew's youth director when he was just a young boy. He left our Baptist church before Andrew was a teenager, and Andrew heard how he had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and was seeing great miracles happen. He had one room in his church that was filled with the wheelchairs, crutches, and braces of people who were healed and didn't need them anymore.
During a three- or four-month period of time, Andrew thought about this man often. It was usually while he was in prayer that he would just come to mind, and Andrew would feel the compassion of God toward him. He would just wonder what was happening with him and then dismiss the thoughts. Later, he found that he had died in a freak accident where a red ant bit him on the thumb, imagine.
As soon as Wommack heard of his death, he knew that the reason he had been thinking of him so often was because the Lord was trying to get him to intercede for him. Over a decade later, Andrew met this man's son, and he confessed to him his failure to pray for his dad. He told him that he was at least the twelfth person who had told him a similar story. The Lord had impressed many of them to intercede for this man, but none of them recognized it as the Lord.
It is imperative that we learn to recognize and flow in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It's not only a blessing to us, but the lives of other people may depend on it. You are carrying someone's miracle. Don't let it stay inside. You have to learn how to release it.
There is much more that the Lord has shown us about flowing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This article doesn't come close to covering all the material but there are series by Andrew Wommack entitled, How To: Flow in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
• Prophecy
• Ministering
• Teaching
• Exhortation
• Giving with simplicity
• Ruling with diligence
• Showing mercy with Cheerfulness
1CORINTHIANS12:8-12
The Gift of;
• Word of Wisdom
• Word of Knowledge
• Faith
• Healing
• Working of Miracles
• Prophecy
• Discerning of Spirits
• Divers kinds of Tongues
• Interpretation of Tongues
I believe that one of the biggest reasons that the body of Christ hasn't made a greater impact on our generation today like in the book of Acts is Discerning of our failure to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Without a doubt, Jesus and the first apostles used the gifts like a bell, calling men to their message and confirming that God was truly the One speaking through them.
Hebrews 2:3-4 says,
"How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?" The Lord bore witness to the accuracy of their message through miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
In Mark 16:17-18, Jesus said all true believers would flow in the miraculous: "And these signs will follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
If a Christian's life isn't supernatural, it's superficial. If its possible for you to explain away every event in your life then you are in the natural not in the supernatural . This is a radical statement going by todays trend in the church.
Mark goes on to say that messages based in God's Word would be confirmed by signs following: "So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen."
Jesus even said, "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not" (John 10:37). That's another strong statement.
If we were to apply that standard to ministers today, that means most wouldn't be believed. The vast majority of preaching done in the name of the Lord today is without the power of the Holy Spirit manifest through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This is not the way the Lord intended it to be.
The "main line" denominations have developed doctrines to cope with this obvious discrepancy. And many church goers having no experience of these things think its okay to do without them.
However, regardless of the rationale, it's absurd to think that we can be effective without the power of the Holy Spirit confirming the preaching of God's Word. If Jesus and the early apostles needed their preaching validated, how can we do any less? "signs and wonders in a sense are God's trademark of approval, otherwise that preaching is just cheap talk.
Even the non-denominational churches have fallen away from ministering in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The gifts that operate in most "Spirit-filled" churches are simply words of exhortation or prophecy, but the bible reveals much more.
The Lord has used the gifts of the Holy Spirit mightily in my life and ministry to confirm His Word. There are countless times when people were still skeptical after hearing me teach, but the demonstration of God's power through the gifts turned them into believers. It's like the teaching fills their mouths with God's Word, then the gifts of the Holy Spirit slap them on the back and make them swallow it. Hallelujah!
One of the most important steps to flowing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit is to earnestly desire them.
• Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:31, "But covet earnestly the best gifts."
• He repeated that thought in 1 Corinthians 14:1 when he said, "Desire spiritual gifts." Simply put, for as long as you can live without flowing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you will. You have to seek these gifts with all your heart, as its not a half hearted experience (Jer. 29:13). "And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."
It's also very important to understand that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are always flowing. God doesn't turn them "on" and "off." We are the ones who are "on" or "off." That's a startling statement to many people and one that verges on blasphemy to some, but it's true. The Lord is always ready to flow through us in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
It's just like praying in tongues. We don't have to wait for the anointing of the Holy Spirit to come on us to speak in tongues. We can pray in tongues at any time. It's not us turning on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is always on and giving us the ability to speak in tongues. Therefore, whenever we turn ourselves on, the gift of tongues is there to allow us to communicate with our heavenly Father. Praise the Lord! That's the way it is with all the gifts.
One time when Andrew Womack was teaching along these lines in Charis Bible College. One of the students said, "So, you are saying that you can flow in the gifts of the Holy Spirit at any time?" Andrfew said , "That's right and I'll prove it to you." He then started down each row and just started "reading the students' mail. He was telling them things that had to be coming from the Holy Spirit. It was awesome.
No one has received everything that the Holy Spirit has for them. Therefore, the Lord is always seeking to release more to us through His supernatural gifts. Whenever we put ourselves in a mode to be His channel, His gifts will flow. The old "Pentecostal" doctrine of the anointing coming and going is not a New Testament truth. First John 2:27 says, "But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you."
Another great truth about flowing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit is what John Osteen called "the divine flow." This is based on, "God is love"
(1 John 4:8). --"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." Therefore, whenever we discern the love of God flowing through us toward someone, God is reaching out to them through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. All we have to do is follow that flow through faith.
Once when Andrew Wommack was pastoring a little church in Pritchett, Colorado, his heart just went out to a woman in the back of the room. He'd never seen her before, and there was nothing natural that drew him to her. It was just the love of God flowing through him to her. Because of that love alone, he told her that God had a word for her. Andrew didn't have one single word to say to her, but he knew God's love was flowing; and therefore, God and His gifts were flowing to her. So Womack just started by saying, "God loves you." God then flooded his mind with things to minister to her.
It was a long word from the Lord, but Andrew specifically told her about how she was grieving over the loss of someone and was confused about why God allowed it. Andrew kept saying, "It wasn't God that allowed it. It was the Destroyer." He said that a number of times. She broke down in tears and was really ministered to.
After the service, she told him that she had just lost her son to leukemia. They believed that God allowed this disease. But just before her son died, her husband saw this huge demon over their town, which the Lord told him was named the Destroyer. They didn't know how to interpret that until Andrew spoke to them through the gifts of the Holy Spirit and put it all in order. They were set free.
This was the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom in operation. God gave Andrew the knowledge of what had happened and then gave words of wisdom to instruct them on how to deal with it. This all came because Andrfew followed the love that I felt in my heart.
This has happened to us all, but most of the time we don't understand this is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and we miss an opportunity. According to Andrew he learned this the hard way.
There was a man who had been Andrew's youth director when he was just a young boy. He left our Baptist church before Andrew was a teenager, and Andrew heard how he had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and was seeing great miracles happen. He had one room in his church that was filled with the wheelchairs, crutches, and braces of people who were healed and didn't need them anymore.
During a three- or four-month period of time, Andrew thought about this man often. It was usually while he was in prayer that he would just come to mind, and Andrew would feel the compassion of God toward him. He would just wonder what was happening with him and then dismiss the thoughts. Later, he found that he had died in a freak accident where a red ant bit him on the thumb, imagine.
As soon as Wommack heard of his death, he knew that the reason he had been thinking of him so often was because the Lord was trying to get him to intercede for him. Over a decade later, Andrew met this man's son, and he confessed to him his failure to pray for his dad. He told him that he was at least the twelfth person who had told him a similar story. The Lord had impressed many of them to intercede for this man, but none of them recognized it as the Lord.
It is imperative that we learn to recognize and flow in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It's not only a blessing to us, but the lives of other people may depend on it. You are carrying someone's miracle. Don't let it stay inside. You have to learn how to release it.
There is much more that the Lord has shown us about flowing in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This article doesn't come close to covering all the material but there are series by Andrew Wommack entitled, How To: Flow in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Getting to Hear God's Voice, Tuning your Receiver
One of the greatest benefits of our salvation has to be that of hearing God speak to us personally. There can be no intimate relationship with our heavenly Father without it. But, as easy as it is for us to speak to Him, most of us believers have a hard time hearing His voice.
This is not the way the Lord intended it to be. This is an abnormality. We are spirit beings who should live in the supernatural, as its the parent realm and faith is what reconnects us back into that realm from this physical realm we live in.
Learning to clearly distinguish God's voice is invaluable. Instead of going through life blindly, we can have the wisdom of God guide and protect us. There isn't a single person reading this letter who couldn't have their life radically transformed by hearing the voice of the Lord better. If you have sickness or disease, one living word from the Lord will instantly heal you. If you are in financial crisis, the Lord knows exactly how to turn your situation around. It's just a matter of hearing His voice. You might be at the brink of death and yet one tiny piece of information could tremendously save your life.
For example some URA staff could have been involved in the bomb blasts at Kyadondo if it wasnt for CG's invitation to the drive in at NIP. Maybe the Lord was behind that very unusual gesture, but the point is that God was behind the protection of the URA staff from that explosion.
The Lord constantly speaks to us and gives us His direction. It's never the Lord who is not speaking, but it's us who are not hearing. Jesus made some radical statements about hearing His voice in John 10:3-5. He was speaking about Himself as the Shepherd of the sheep and the only way to enter the sheepfold.
"To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice; and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers."
Notice that He said in verse 3, His sheep hear His voice. He didn't say His sheep CAN hear His voice or SHOULD hear His voice. He made the emphatic statement that His sheep DO hear His voice. Its like saying Living beings breath air, period. So as a sheep you have been inbuilt with a God hearing device, the question is whether you use it.
Most Christians would question the accuracy of the above statements since their experiences don't line up with what I am saying. But it's not what Jesus said that is wrong; all true believers can and do hear the voice of God; they just don't recognize that what they are hearing is God's voice.
Radio, television and mobile phone transmitters send out signals twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; but we only hear them when we turn the receiver on and tune it in. A mobile phone is a receiver as well. Failure to hear the signal doesn't mean the station isn't transmitting. If your phone loses network it is not the problem of MTN or Warid.
Likewise, God is constantly transmitting His voice to His sheep, but few are turned on and tuned in. Its just like saying that God is always posting emails to your mailbox, but the question is ...do you access it and read them, before you complain that God is not communicating?
Most Christians are busy pleading with God in prayer to transmit when the problem is with their receivers. They are haranging God to drop them directions when they do not open their mailboxes which are incidentally very accessible.
The first thing we need to do is fix our receivers or get into the habit of accessing and reading our spiritual emails — believe that God is already speaking or sending emails and now it is time for you to embark on listening in or reading your messages.
However, note that is gonna take you time, some serious persistence, and steady focus. The average Christian's lifestyle is so hectic, it isn't conducive to hearing God's voice. In URA with all the pressure and balanced score card and perfomance objectives, life has become even more hectic.
For instance, what is your typical answer to the question, "How are you?" Many of you probably answer something about being very busy or something like "very stressed". I often say, "I'm busier than a mother with triplets." All of us seem to be busier than ever, and that's one of the BIG reasons we don't hear the voice of the Lord better. This is the trend everywhere.
We're just too busy. There's hardly any space for quiet time even for our earthly darlings. We are just super busy, we even take work home with or without good planning. Everything is an emergency. Any time that we free up is promptly taken up by entertainment, fellowship or overnights. There is always stuff that is awaiting.
Psalm 46:10 says,
"Be still, and know that I am God."
It's in stillness, not busyness, that we tune our spiritual ears to hear the voice of God. You can only know God when your engine is in idle state rather than in motion. The Lord always speaks to us in that "STILL, small voice" (1 Kings 19:12, emphasis mine), but often it's drowned out amid all the turmoil of our daily lives. We run a very tight ship.
Second, and this is very important, most often we mistake the voice of the Lord for our own thoughts. That's right. I said the voice of the Lord comes to us in our own thoughts. Its like when your stomach rumbles to your mind about hunger, you wont say my stomach is hungry. Instead it comes out of your mouth as if its your thought. You say to yourself, i need to eat in a monotone or self-tone.
In the same way your spirit Man speaks to your brain or mind what he receives from God. Your new man communicates telepathically with God- The Holy Spirit and the two are in perfect harmony as your spirit is IDENTICAL to Jesus. One Spirit speaks to another spirit. Both are in the spirit realm, your body/mind which is in the physical realm simply captures it, as a thought and converts the thought into audio format when u speak or verbalize your thoughts
John 4:24 says,
"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
This is saying that communication with God is Spirit to spirit, not brain to brain or mouth to ear, the way we communicate in the physical realm. The Lord speaks to our spirits, not in words, but in thoughts and impressions. Then our spirits speak to our minds which we capture in our imagination or subconscious in thoughts and convert to words like, "I think the Lord wants me to do this or that."
The Lord doesn't typically say "You do this or that," like a second voice from outer space, but He will impress your spirit to do something, and then your spirit says, "I think I should do . . ." when it dawns on your mind. Therefore, we often miss the leading of the Lord, thinking it's our own thoughts.
Every one of us has done something that we later regretted afterwards saying, "I knew that was the wrong thing to do. Something tried holding me back but I insisted" We didn't feel right about our decision, but we followed reasoning or logic or pressure rather than intuition only to find that our impression was right all along and that it was actually the Lord speaking to us. Sometimes it is our senses or the carnal nature that clouds God's leading.
I learned this the hard way when I started making bricks for my house using the soil on my plot. Before I went into the venture something was holding me back and telling me to instead buy.
Initially I had incurred serious losses with the very 1st "tanulu" or Kiln when I began construction. Now later as I made bricks for the perimeter wall I felt an impression to quit the idea with the 1st porter handling the project. Matter of fact that "tanulu" had even collapsed during the baking process.
So I hired a more skilled porter but immediately my heart was not at peace with this guy, yet physically he was more energetic and skilled. I reasoned a lot with keeping this fellow at my premises as I gave him other duties apart from brickmaking in his free time. The truth is that guy was hardworking although he was a habitual drunko and sometimes he would steal our food which was in the store adjacent to his living quaters, to fund his drinking habit.
To cut the story short 2 years later this guy became the devil himself, there is hardly anything I ever profited in any of the work he undertook. Things would seem like they are shifting but then turn out badly in the end. On top of being a theif, I discovered that he had abondoned his family and kept rejecting my calls for him to get saved after preaching grace to him on many ocassions. Can u imagine my wife through her intuition felt that we should terminate his work immediately, however, being a man, I went with logic or my reasoning instead of my heart. I made some of the worst losses in terms of where I used the money for the house.
It was a terrible experience. As soon as this man showed his true colors, I knew in my heart that the feelings and thoughts I had were the Lord speaking to me, and I had dismissed them as my own. I made a decision there and then that I would never ignore my heart again.Sometimes we call this intuition but it needs to backed by scripture to know that it is not carnal. Women especially, have great intution developed from being mothers.
Psalm 37:4 says,
"Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart."
This verse has often been interpreted to mean that the Lord will give you whatever you want and has been used to justify selfish mortives, greed, and even adultery. But it doesn't mean that the Lord will give you whatever you want; it means that when you are seeking the Lord, He will put His wants or desires into your heart. He will make His desires become your desires. The Lord changes your "want tos." Then you will find that when u want something its like God himself wanting it, and God always gets His wants met.
A friend of mine survived the Sunday bomb blast because he got a sudden urge to go to the loos at the precise moment of the explosion. Again many guys survived because they decided to go to a different place on that fateful day.
I for one had prepared to hang out that night and watch that cup final in an unsual place with my Wife, but I was interrupted by a late night visitor. Who knows I could have ended up there and we'd be both dead. Actually towards the start of the match I lost interest in going out and this was compounded when my wife suddenly abondoned the idea of partying that night.
That is the dominant way the Lord speaks to us, and we often miss that kind of communication. Its like missing timely intelligence information and then you wind up with a bomb blast.
As believers we need to get into the habit of listening. Some people who have advanced in these things have setup personal listening posts already. This is the best intelligence information you can get even it sounds crazy.
Am in the midst of making one of the most important decisions of my life. Ever since the Lord touched me with the revelation of Grace I have began feeling I should not be where I am currently. My desires have changed, and I don't want to be in a certain place anymore. And following those new desires, I intend to make a radical decision to quit.
There are many risks with that decision and I am sure some people might hate me for being "unreasonable". But when I look at the prospects and the divine purpose of my decision I know this is not the work of the devil. I stand to lose many opportunities, friends and about 1.2 million per month in Salary, plus possible hindrance in supporting the education of my children, but I also stand to gain much much more.
Madness is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. I have been buried at this place for over 13 years with fear to make a radical decision, and as a result I have not experienced radical changes in my life. If you aim at nothing you hit nothing. If you aim at the stars you could easily hit the moon.
I have toyed with this idea since 2009, because of these adverse risks to my decision, I had backed off for a while and I have been absolutely miserable. This has been going on for 1 year and I feel I cannot take it anymore, I just know that I have to move and If I do It will spark off a series of activities in the spirit realm that are mainly to my benefit and calling.
When I read Romans 14:23, it says,
"Whatsoever is not of faith is sin."
With this verse I realize It is sin to be undecided and yet I feel the time is now. By the way the bible says the Just shall live by faith and that those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham, its like faith drives you into the spirit realm away from the physical carnal realm.
Back in the old testament people were spiritually dead but God was able to use them mightily whenever they put their faith in Him. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Samson were not exactly holy but God used them and yet He considered them friends. These guys were not saved, but through their faith they experienced God's power and were in a sense saved on Credit.
We are supposed to walk by faith and not sight. It is always better to make a mistake in faith than ignore God's leading. There is a strong connection between faith and the supernatural realm. Even non believers who follow intuition and God's promptings are far better than believers who do not and have gotten all rational and confused with indecision, double mindedness resulting from mixing law and grace.
Anyway I am determined to make a faith decision and I believe I will stick with it. As I pray and study the Word for guidance, let me share Colossians 3:15, which says,
"And let the peace of God rule in your hearts."
The Lord will always lead you into the direction that gives you the most peace. To be truthful, I don't have total peace in any direction, whether to stay or move on but just as an umpire has to make a decision and stick with it, I need to make the call. I have the most peace about quitting this place, so I intend to make the call and step out of indecision into faith, to the best of my understanding.
Already in my Spirit I feel like The Lord has already began giving me such confirmation and joy that I have no doubt about the decision. I know there will be an avalanche of opportunities and activity in the spirit realm the moment I put pen to paper. Somehow my sitting on the fence is holding up so many things including the deployment of angels to their assignments. Its that serious guys.
That one decision, possibly more than any other, might set my life on a course that might bring me to the place I never dreamt I would be. It seems I have not been living up until now.
I am convinced that our gracious heavenly Father speaks constantly to every one of His children in this way, giving us all the information and guidance we need to be total overcomers. There isn't a problem with His transmitter; it's our receiver that needs help, its our mailbox that needs sorting out. Its our mails that need to be read, its that intelligent piece of infomation that needs to be processed in a timely manner.
Most people are imploring God to speak, when it's our inbuilt hearing device that needs to be adjusted. Taking this faith-stance that God is speaking and then learning to listen and obey will transform your relationship with the Lord. It could even save your life. Am sure that most of the 7/11 survivors in Kampala did something similar to this kind of thing and survived.
If CG had not invited URA staff for the NIP drive in, many URA staff would have been among the dead of 7/11. That invitation could have been the result of a prompting by God.
This is not the way the Lord intended it to be. This is an abnormality. We are spirit beings who should live in the supernatural, as its the parent realm and faith is what reconnects us back into that realm from this physical realm we live in.
Learning to clearly distinguish God's voice is invaluable. Instead of going through life blindly, we can have the wisdom of God guide and protect us. There isn't a single person reading this letter who couldn't have their life radically transformed by hearing the voice of the Lord better. If you have sickness or disease, one living word from the Lord will instantly heal you. If you are in financial crisis, the Lord knows exactly how to turn your situation around. It's just a matter of hearing His voice. You might be at the brink of death and yet one tiny piece of information could tremendously save your life.
For example some URA staff could have been involved in the bomb blasts at Kyadondo if it wasnt for CG's invitation to the drive in at NIP. Maybe the Lord was behind that very unusual gesture, but the point is that God was behind the protection of the URA staff from that explosion.
The Lord constantly speaks to us and gives us His direction. It's never the Lord who is not speaking, but it's us who are not hearing. Jesus made some radical statements about hearing His voice in John 10:3-5. He was speaking about Himself as the Shepherd of the sheep and the only way to enter the sheepfold.
"To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice; and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers."
Notice that He said in verse 3, His sheep hear His voice. He didn't say His sheep CAN hear His voice or SHOULD hear His voice. He made the emphatic statement that His sheep DO hear His voice. Its like saying Living beings breath air, period. So as a sheep you have been inbuilt with a God hearing device, the question is whether you use it.
Most Christians would question the accuracy of the above statements since their experiences don't line up with what I am saying. But it's not what Jesus said that is wrong; all true believers can and do hear the voice of God; they just don't recognize that what they are hearing is God's voice.
Radio, television and mobile phone transmitters send out signals twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; but we only hear them when we turn the receiver on and tune it in. A mobile phone is a receiver as well. Failure to hear the signal doesn't mean the station isn't transmitting. If your phone loses network it is not the problem of MTN or Warid.
Likewise, God is constantly transmitting His voice to His sheep, but few are turned on and tuned in. Its just like saying that God is always posting emails to your mailbox, but the question is ...do you access it and read them, before you complain that God is not communicating?
Most Christians are busy pleading with God in prayer to transmit when the problem is with their receivers. They are haranging God to drop them directions when they do not open their mailboxes which are incidentally very accessible.
The first thing we need to do is fix our receivers or get into the habit of accessing and reading our spiritual emails — believe that God is already speaking or sending emails and now it is time for you to embark on listening in or reading your messages.
However, note that is gonna take you time, some serious persistence, and steady focus. The average Christian's lifestyle is so hectic, it isn't conducive to hearing God's voice. In URA with all the pressure and balanced score card and perfomance objectives, life has become even more hectic.
For instance, what is your typical answer to the question, "How are you?" Many of you probably answer something about being very busy or something like "very stressed". I often say, "I'm busier than a mother with triplets." All of us seem to be busier than ever, and that's one of the BIG reasons we don't hear the voice of the Lord better. This is the trend everywhere.
We're just too busy. There's hardly any space for quiet time even for our earthly darlings. We are just super busy, we even take work home with or without good planning. Everything is an emergency. Any time that we free up is promptly taken up by entertainment, fellowship or overnights. There is always stuff that is awaiting.
Psalm 46:10 says,
"Be still, and know that I am God."
It's in stillness, not busyness, that we tune our spiritual ears to hear the voice of God. You can only know God when your engine is in idle state rather than in motion. The Lord always speaks to us in that "STILL, small voice" (1 Kings 19:12, emphasis mine), but often it's drowned out amid all the turmoil of our daily lives. We run a very tight ship.
Second, and this is very important, most often we mistake the voice of the Lord for our own thoughts. That's right. I said the voice of the Lord comes to us in our own thoughts. Its like when your stomach rumbles to your mind about hunger, you wont say my stomach is hungry. Instead it comes out of your mouth as if its your thought. You say to yourself, i need to eat in a monotone or self-tone.
In the same way your spirit Man speaks to your brain or mind what he receives from God. Your new man communicates telepathically with God- The Holy Spirit and the two are in perfect harmony as your spirit is IDENTICAL to Jesus. One Spirit speaks to another spirit. Both are in the spirit realm, your body/mind which is in the physical realm simply captures it, as a thought and converts the thought into audio format when u speak or verbalize your thoughts
John 4:24 says,
"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
This is saying that communication with God is Spirit to spirit, not brain to brain or mouth to ear, the way we communicate in the physical realm. The Lord speaks to our spirits, not in words, but in thoughts and impressions. Then our spirits speak to our minds which we capture in our imagination or subconscious in thoughts and convert to words like, "I think the Lord wants me to do this or that."
The Lord doesn't typically say "You do this or that," like a second voice from outer space, but He will impress your spirit to do something, and then your spirit says, "I think I should do . . ." when it dawns on your mind. Therefore, we often miss the leading of the Lord, thinking it's our own thoughts.
Every one of us has done something that we later regretted afterwards saying, "I knew that was the wrong thing to do. Something tried holding me back but I insisted" We didn't feel right about our decision, but we followed reasoning or logic or pressure rather than intuition only to find that our impression was right all along and that it was actually the Lord speaking to us. Sometimes it is our senses or the carnal nature that clouds God's leading.
I learned this the hard way when I started making bricks for my house using the soil on my plot. Before I went into the venture something was holding me back and telling me to instead buy.
Initially I had incurred serious losses with the very 1st "tanulu" or Kiln when I began construction. Now later as I made bricks for the perimeter wall I felt an impression to quit the idea with the 1st porter handling the project. Matter of fact that "tanulu" had even collapsed during the baking process.
So I hired a more skilled porter but immediately my heart was not at peace with this guy, yet physically he was more energetic and skilled. I reasoned a lot with keeping this fellow at my premises as I gave him other duties apart from brickmaking in his free time. The truth is that guy was hardworking although he was a habitual drunko and sometimes he would steal our food which was in the store adjacent to his living quaters, to fund his drinking habit.
To cut the story short 2 years later this guy became the devil himself, there is hardly anything I ever profited in any of the work he undertook. Things would seem like they are shifting but then turn out badly in the end. On top of being a theif, I discovered that he had abondoned his family and kept rejecting my calls for him to get saved after preaching grace to him on many ocassions. Can u imagine my wife through her intuition felt that we should terminate his work immediately, however, being a man, I went with logic or my reasoning instead of my heart. I made some of the worst losses in terms of where I used the money for the house.
It was a terrible experience. As soon as this man showed his true colors, I knew in my heart that the feelings and thoughts I had were the Lord speaking to me, and I had dismissed them as my own. I made a decision there and then that I would never ignore my heart again.Sometimes we call this intuition but it needs to backed by scripture to know that it is not carnal. Women especially, have great intution developed from being mothers.
Psalm 37:4 says,
"Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart."
This verse has often been interpreted to mean that the Lord will give you whatever you want and has been used to justify selfish mortives, greed, and even adultery. But it doesn't mean that the Lord will give you whatever you want; it means that when you are seeking the Lord, He will put His wants or desires into your heart. He will make His desires become your desires. The Lord changes your "want tos." Then you will find that when u want something its like God himself wanting it, and God always gets His wants met.
A friend of mine survived the Sunday bomb blast because he got a sudden urge to go to the loos at the precise moment of the explosion. Again many guys survived because they decided to go to a different place on that fateful day.
I for one had prepared to hang out that night and watch that cup final in an unsual place with my Wife, but I was interrupted by a late night visitor. Who knows I could have ended up there and we'd be both dead. Actually towards the start of the match I lost interest in going out and this was compounded when my wife suddenly abondoned the idea of partying that night.
That is the dominant way the Lord speaks to us, and we often miss that kind of communication. Its like missing timely intelligence information and then you wind up with a bomb blast.
As believers we need to get into the habit of listening. Some people who have advanced in these things have setup personal listening posts already. This is the best intelligence information you can get even it sounds crazy.
Am in the midst of making one of the most important decisions of my life. Ever since the Lord touched me with the revelation of Grace I have began feeling I should not be where I am currently. My desires have changed, and I don't want to be in a certain place anymore. And following those new desires, I intend to make a radical decision to quit.
There are many risks with that decision and I am sure some people might hate me for being "unreasonable". But when I look at the prospects and the divine purpose of my decision I know this is not the work of the devil. I stand to lose many opportunities, friends and about 1.2 million per month in Salary, plus possible hindrance in supporting the education of my children, but I also stand to gain much much more.
Madness is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. I have been buried at this place for over 13 years with fear to make a radical decision, and as a result I have not experienced radical changes in my life. If you aim at nothing you hit nothing. If you aim at the stars you could easily hit the moon.
I have toyed with this idea since 2009, because of these adverse risks to my decision, I had backed off for a while and I have been absolutely miserable. This has been going on for 1 year and I feel I cannot take it anymore, I just know that I have to move and If I do It will spark off a series of activities in the spirit realm that are mainly to my benefit and calling.
When I read Romans 14:23, it says,
"Whatsoever is not of faith is sin."
With this verse I realize It is sin to be undecided and yet I feel the time is now. By the way the bible says the Just shall live by faith and that those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham, its like faith drives you into the spirit realm away from the physical carnal realm.
Back in the old testament people were spiritually dead but God was able to use them mightily whenever they put their faith in Him. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Samson were not exactly holy but God used them and yet He considered them friends. These guys were not saved, but through their faith they experienced God's power and were in a sense saved on Credit.
We are supposed to walk by faith and not sight. It is always better to make a mistake in faith than ignore God's leading. There is a strong connection between faith and the supernatural realm. Even non believers who follow intuition and God's promptings are far better than believers who do not and have gotten all rational and confused with indecision, double mindedness resulting from mixing law and grace.
Anyway I am determined to make a faith decision and I believe I will stick with it. As I pray and study the Word for guidance, let me share Colossians 3:15, which says,
"And let the peace of God rule in your hearts."
The Lord will always lead you into the direction that gives you the most peace. To be truthful, I don't have total peace in any direction, whether to stay or move on but just as an umpire has to make a decision and stick with it, I need to make the call. I have the most peace about quitting this place, so I intend to make the call and step out of indecision into faith, to the best of my understanding.
Already in my Spirit I feel like The Lord has already began giving me such confirmation and joy that I have no doubt about the decision. I know there will be an avalanche of opportunities and activity in the spirit realm the moment I put pen to paper. Somehow my sitting on the fence is holding up so many things including the deployment of angels to their assignments. Its that serious guys.
That one decision, possibly more than any other, might set my life on a course that might bring me to the place I never dreamt I would be. It seems I have not been living up until now.
I am convinced that our gracious heavenly Father speaks constantly to every one of His children in this way, giving us all the information and guidance we need to be total overcomers. There isn't a problem with His transmitter; it's our receiver that needs help, its our mailbox that needs sorting out. Its our mails that need to be read, its that intelligent piece of infomation that needs to be processed in a timely manner.
Most people are imploring God to speak, when it's our inbuilt hearing device that needs to be adjusted. Taking this faith-stance that God is speaking and then learning to listen and obey will transform your relationship with the Lord. It could even save your life. Am sure that most of the 7/11 survivors in Kampala did something similar to this kind of thing and survived.
If CG had not invited URA staff for the NIP drive in, many URA staff would have been among the dead of 7/11. That invitation could have been the result of a prompting by God.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
God's Nature is this One
God is a good God!
He isn’t mad at us.
He not only loves us, He likes us!
He will never leave us nor forsake us, no matter how badly we miss it.
His mercies are new every morning!
Our sin does not affect His opinion of us nor cause Him to withhold His blessing!
Great is His faithfulness!!!!
These sound like very radical statements! Just think about the typical Christian teaching concerning God today. Usually, God is presented as stern, angry, and ready to get us for the slightest misstep. Or at least He certainly won’t answer our prayers if we sin. That’s wrong, and it leads to wrong conclusions and attitudes toward God that hinder an intimate relationship with Him.
So why is the Lord represented so harshly? The answer can be partly found in the lack of understanding of the harmony between the Old and New Testament. In the Old Testament, the Lord vented His anger and judgment often, and in very devastating ways.
• There was Noah’s flood;
• the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah;
• a death angel killed all the firstborn of Egypt in one night;
• another angel killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night;
• And on and on the list goes.
Matter of fact I have heard one local artist sing “Muliro gwake” and I think this is largely derived from the old testament in 2Kings when Fire came and consumed 102 men and its says in 2Kings 1:12 “…and the Fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.”
There is no doubt our God is a holy God who hates sin and demands justice, but if your eyes are only upon the Judgmental side of God, then you will think that is His default side, or the better part of Him.
However, there is also the portrait of God that Jesus painted for us through His teachings and actions, how,
• He showed mercy to the worst of sinners,
• associated with publicans and harlots,
• loved the unlovely, and then
• His ultimate action of dying for our sins proved beyond any doubt that He came to save the world, not condemn it.
1) How does this fit with the Old Testament view of the harshness and severity of God?
2) Are the new and old testaments insinuating that God schizophrenic?
3) Does God sometimes love us and other times hate us?
4) How can we have a healthy relationship with someone who gets these mood swings?
These questions present a dilemma that has kept many people at arm’s length from the Lord. The vast majority of people KNOW there is a God; they just don’t know how to relate to Him. They are confused because mixed signals have been sent to them, often by the church.
A minister will say that it was the Lord, in His sovereignty, who killed a baby; and in the next breath, the minister will ask if anyone wants to serve this GOOD GOD. We are told that God won’t answer the prayer of anyone in sin, and yet we are told that the bible says we have all sinned. Where does that leave us? Without a prayer!
There is a simple answer to these questions, and a harmony between the wrath and mercy of God.
God is not schizophrenic.
There is one, true nature of God clearly represented in the Word, and that is LOVE!
First John 4:8 says,
“God is love.”
He doesn’t just love at times. Love is the nature of God! Jesus gave us the greatest representation of the true nature of God ever presented. Anybody who loves also wants to be loved, this means God too wants Love, and that’s why He embeds Love inside us. We love because He first loved us.
God placed our sins on Jesus and punished Him in our place. God satisfied His own demands for justice, not by punishing us, but by punishing His Son in our place. This wasn’t a partial payment which required adding our holiness; it was a total payment that leaves us with nothing to do except;
• Believe and receive, or
• Doubt and do without.
Jesus’ payment for our sins forever changed our relationship with the Father. If Jesus had made His sacrifice for sins in the Old Testament, then we wouldn’t have seen the wrath of God vented as recorded in the Old Testament scriptures.
Here’s an example. In 2 Kings 1, Elijah called fire down from heaven and killed 102 soldiers who had come to arrest him. Jesus’ disciples (specifically the sons of thunder) attempted to bring the same to bear on Samaria, by asking the same thing and cited Elijah as their example. Jesus rebuked them for even thinking about such an act and said,
“Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9:55-56).
Jesus rebuked His disciples for trying to follow Elijah’s example. This shows that if Jesus had been present on the earth in His role as Messiah, this act of judgment wouldn’t have happened. There is a difference between the way God dealt with mankind under the Old Covenant and the way He deals with mankind under the New Covenant.
Before the sacrifice of Jesus, there was judgment. But it wasn’t because the Lord desired to punish us. His nature has always been love. However, a price had to be paid for sin, and until that sacrifice was made, there had to be consequences.
It’s similar to training children. If you wait to begin disciplining your children until they are old enough to fully comprehend exactly what you say, you and the child will be in big trouble. A child has to be restrained from doing wrong from a very young age.
At one or two years old, they may not understand that it’s the devil tempting them to take their sibling’s toys. However, they can understand, “If you do that again, you are going to get a spanking.” They may not comprehend heaven and hell issues, but when the devil tempts them with covetousness, they will say NO, because they fear a spanking.
It can also be said for a malignant wound that is eating up somebody’s leg. While a doctor may have to amputate in order to save the rest of the leg, this does not mean that the doctor hates you, he is merely saving your life. This is what Happened to Man in the beginning in the Old Testament, and religion concluded that God was a Stern Judge, but God was simply saving the situation from getting very bad.
Before the new birth, people were sinning and that sin was destroying their lives. God didn’t want to punish them. He was willing to show them mercy on credit, in a sense, looking forward to the sacrifice of His own Son for their sins. People began to take the lack of God’s judgment as approval.
This can be clearly seen with Cain and his descendants. Cain killed his brother Abel because of jealousy (Gen. 4). Instead of punishment, God extended mercy toward Cain, even putting a mark on his forehead to warn others that God was protecting him.
Cain’s great-great-great-grandson, Lamech, interpreted this as approval of murder. He killed a man in self-defense and, therefore, felt more justified in his killing than Cain. He said that if God would avenge Cain sevenfold, then He would avenge Lamech seventy and sevenfold.
God didn’t say that, Lamech did. Lamech was presuming on God because of His grace toward Cain. Therefore, mankind began to move so far away from a proper standard of holiness that if God hadn’t intervened, there wouldn’t have been a virgin left to give birth to Jesus.
Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 10:12,
“But they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.”
This has always been the case. If one person gets by with sin, others will take that as an approval of sin. So before the Lord could produce the new birth, where He lives within us and guides us through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, He placed external restraints on sin that even lost people could understand. “You sin and you die.” That’s the way it was.
That wasn’t the way God really wanted it to be, but sin had to be restrained until Jesus’ atoning sacrifice was made. God’s withholding of punishment for sin had led to a total loss of a true standard of right and wrong. Mankind had compared themselves with others so often and for so long that no one knew what God originally intended. Something had to be done.
Sin was destroying the human race and needed to be restrained. Therefore, God gave the Law. But why didn’t He give the Law to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 2,000 years earlier and prevent these problems? Because of love. The Law had serious side effects of condemnation and guilt. God didn’t want us running from Him out of fear but to Him because of love and grace.
The Law was never God’s plan for salvation. It was God showing us that we could never measure up to His holy standard. It was given to drive us from self-righteousness and toward receiving the sacrifice of Jesus by faith. By the law is the Knowledge of Sin, and the Law activates Sin. The law also increases sin.
Amazingly, the church has interpreted it in the opposite way. Most Christians think the Law is wonderful, that God expects us to keep it, and that His response to us is based on our compliance. That’s just not true!
The Law was given for two main purposes. First, the fear of God’s punishment constrained sin in people’s lives, thereby diminishing Satan’s inroads. Second, it totally took away all hope of being saved by any virtue of themselves. The Law made everyone guilty before God with no hope of justice. We needed mercy.
Those were the main purposes of the Law. It was not God’s list of steps one through ten thousand of what you must do to be right with Him. It was God’s list of all you have done wrong, proving that you can never be right with God unless He provides another form of payment. It was not to set you free. The Law was to bind and destroy you. It was a severe spanking for the whole human race to turn us from sin, self righteousness, self effort and self-salvation.
He isn’t mad at us.
He not only loves us, He likes us!
He will never leave us nor forsake us, no matter how badly we miss it.
His mercies are new every morning!
Our sin does not affect His opinion of us nor cause Him to withhold His blessing!
Great is His faithfulness!!!!
These sound like very radical statements! Just think about the typical Christian teaching concerning God today. Usually, God is presented as stern, angry, and ready to get us for the slightest misstep. Or at least He certainly won’t answer our prayers if we sin. That’s wrong, and it leads to wrong conclusions and attitudes toward God that hinder an intimate relationship with Him.
So why is the Lord represented so harshly? The answer can be partly found in the lack of understanding of the harmony between the Old and New Testament. In the Old Testament, the Lord vented His anger and judgment often, and in very devastating ways.
• There was Noah’s flood;
• the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah;
• a death angel killed all the firstborn of Egypt in one night;
• another angel killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night;
• And on and on the list goes.
Matter of fact I have heard one local artist sing “Muliro gwake” and I think this is largely derived from the old testament in 2Kings when Fire came and consumed 102 men and its says in 2Kings 1:12 “…and the Fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.”
There is no doubt our God is a holy God who hates sin and demands justice, but if your eyes are only upon the Judgmental side of God, then you will think that is His default side, or the better part of Him.
However, there is also the portrait of God that Jesus painted for us through His teachings and actions, how,
• He showed mercy to the worst of sinners,
• associated with publicans and harlots,
• loved the unlovely, and then
• His ultimate action of dying for our sins proved beyond any doubt that He came to save the world, not condemn it.
1) How does this fit with the Old Testament view of the harshness and severity of God?
2) Are the new and old testaments insinuating that God schizophrenic?
3) Does God sometimes love us and other times hate us?
4) How can we have a healthy relationship with someone who gets these mood swings?
These questions present a dilemma that has kept many people at arm’s length from the Lord. The vast majority of people KNOW there is a God; they just don’t know how to relate to Him. They are confused because mixed signals have been sent to them, often by the church.
A minister will say that it was the Lord, in His sovereignty, who killed a baby; and in the next breath, the minister will ask if anyone wants to serve this GOOD GOD. We are told that God won’t answer the prayer of anyone in sin, and yet we are told that the bible says we have all sinned. Where does that leave us? Without a prayer!
There is a simple answer to these questions, and a harmony between the wrath and mercy of God.
God is not schizophrenic.
There is one, true nature of God clearly represented in the Word, and that is LOVE!
First John 4:8 says,
“God is love.”
He doesn’t just love at times. Love is the nature of God! Jesus gave us the greatest representation of the true nature of God ever presented. Anybody who loves also wants to be loved, this means God too wants Love, and that’s why He embeds Love inside us. We love because He first loved us.
God placed our sins on Jesus and punished Him in our place. God satisfied His own demands for justice, not by punishing us, but by punishing His Son in our place. This wasn’t a partial payment which required adding our holiness; it was a total payment that leaves us with nothing to do except;
• Believe and receive, or
• Doubt and do without.
Jesus’ payment for our sins forever changed our relationship with the Father. If Jesus had made His sacrifice for sins in the Old Testament, then we wouldn’t have seen the wrath of God vented as recorded in the Old Testament scriptures.
Here’s an example. In 2 Kings 1, Elijah called fire down from heaven and killed 102 soldiers who had come to arrest him. Jesus’ disciples (specifically the sons of thunder) attempted to bring the same to bear on Samaria, by asking the same thing and cited Elijah as their example. Jesus rebuked them for even thinking about such an act and said,
“Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9:55-56).
Jesus rebuked His disciples for trying to follow Elijah’s example. This shows that if Jesus had been present on the earth in His role as Messiah, this act of judgment wouldn’t have happened. There is a difference between the way God dealt with mankind under the Old Covenant and the way He deals with mankind under the New Covenant.
Before the sacrifice of Jesus, there was judgment. But it wasn’t because the Lord desired to punish us. His nature has always been love. However, a price had to be paid for sin, and until that sacrifice was made, there had to be consequences.
It’s similar to training children. If you wait to begin disciplining your children until they are old enough to fully comprehend exactly what you say, you and the child will be in big trouble. A child has to be restrained from doing wrong from a very young age.
At one or two years old, they may not understand that it’s the devil tempting them to take their sibling’s toys. However, they can understand, “If you do that again, you are going to get a spanking.” They may not comprehend heaven and hell issues, but when the devil tempts them with covetousness, they will say NO, because they fear a spanking.
It can also be said for a malignant wound that is eating up somebody’s leg. While a doctor may have to amputate in order to save the rest of the leg, this does not mean that the doctor hates you, he is merely saving your life. This is what Happened to Man in the beginning in the Old Testament, and religion concluded that God was a Stern Judge, but God was simply saving the situation from getting very bad.
Before the new birth, people were sinning and that sin was destroying their lives. God didn’t want to punish them. He was willing to show them mercy on credit, in a sense, looking forward to the sacrifice of His own Son for their sins. People began to take the lack of God’s judgment as approval.
This can be clearly seen with Cain and his descendants. Cain killed his brother Abel because of jealousy (Gen. 4). Instead of punishment, God extended mercy toward Cain, even putting a mark on his forehead to warn others that God was protecting him.
Cain’s great-great-great-grandson, Lamech, interpreted this as approval of murder. He killed a man in self-defense and, therefore, felt more justified in his killing than Cain. He said that if God would avenge Cain sevenfold, then He would avenge Lamech seventy and sevenfold.
God didn’t say that, Lamech did. Lamech was presuming on God because of His grace toward Cain. Therefore, mankind began to move so far away from a proper standard of holiness that if God hadn’t intervened, there wouldn’t have been a virgin left to give birth to Jesus.
Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 10:12,
“But they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.”
This has always been the case. If one person gets by with sin, others will take that as an approval of sin. So before the Lord could produce the new birth, where He lives within us and guides us through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, He placed external restraints on sin that even lost people could understand. “You sin and you die.” That’s the way it was.
That wasn’t the way God really wanted it to be, but sin had to be restrained until Jesus’ atoning sacrifice was made. God’s withholding of punishment for sin had led to a total loss of a true standard of right and wrong. Mankind had compared themselves with others so often and for so long that no one knew what God originally intended. Something had to be done.
Sin was destroying the human race and needed to be restrained. Therefore, God gave the Law. But why didn’t He give the Law to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 2,000 years earlier and prevent these problems? Because of love. The Law had serious side effects of condemnation and guilt. God didn’t want us running from Him out of fear but to Him because of love and grace.
The Law was never God’s plan for salvation. It was God showing us that we could never measure up to His holy standard. It was given to drive us from self-righteousness and toward receiving the sacrifice of Jesus by faith. By the law is the Knowledge of Sin, and the Law activates Sin. The law also increases sin.
Amazingly, the church has interpreted it in the opposite way. Most Christians think the Law is wonderful, that God expects us to keep it, and that His response to us is based on our compliance. That’s just not true!
The Law was given for two main purposes. First, the fear of God’s punishment constrained sin in people’s lives, thereby diminishing Satan’s inroads. Second, it totally took away all hope of being saved by any virtue of themselves. The Law made everyone guilty before God with no hope of justice. We needed mercy.
Those were the main purposes of the Law. It was not God’s list of steps one through ten thousand of what you must do to be right with Him. It was God’s list of all you have done wrong, proving that you can never be right with God unless He provides another form of payment. It was not to set you free. The Law was to bind and destroy you. It was a severe spanking for the whole human race to turn us from sin, self righteousness, self effort and self-salvation.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Getting to KNOW God
If you ask a group of people what the greatest thing in life is, you will probably get as many answers as… Certainly many things contribute to a full and happy life, but If you are a believer I hope you will agree with me that knowing God is absolutely the greatest and most important thing of all there is. Without that, everything else just doesn’t make sense.
The Apostle Paul put it this way in Philippians 3:8:
“Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the Excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”
Think of this: Paul wasn’t a loser. He hadn’t hit rock bottom with nowhere else to go. He wasn’t turning from a life of failure and counting that, as “dung.” He was one of the most educated and accomplished men of his day. He was the elite of the religious class. People knew him and they wanted to be like him.
Think of the most elite of our society today, guys with serious achievements. The kind of fellas that most Dads tell their sons to emulate in any society, and that was Paul for you. By then he was called Saul. I could think of a person like say Professor Balunywa or Patrick Bitature or even to the level of respectable socialites from the telecom companies in Uganda. That’s what you could equate to Paul or Saul at that time in his day.
You see Paul wasn’t writing just about the time before he was born again. Remember as Saul, Paul was the Chief-Harassing-Officer (CHO) of the Christians back then. He had been a Christian for decades at the time he wrote this. After He had gotten saved and having traveled the world and used of God as few men ever had or ever will be, Paul came to the point of Phil 3:10. After all that experience he was still seeking to know God more (Phil. 3:10).
Paul was saying that the best life had to offer and the greatest accomplishments and pursuits of any man, when compared to knowing God, ranked in the same category as manure. He was admitting that he hadn’t arrived but that he had left and was pressing toward that goal of knowing God more (Phil. 3:12-14).
In my 37 years of doing time on this earth so far, I have seen how people exalt qualifications and being very learned. They even hang their achievements on the wall and prefer to be called doctor this and doctor that, or bishop this and honorable that, or even the rightest Reverend Father blah blah blah… Anyway I am not bashing qualifications but Paul looked at similar achievements that he had attained and said they were nothing but dung, compared to knowing God. Whew Imagine that?
What does it say, when the man who wrote half of the New Testament was still pursuing knowing God decades after his conversion? Certainly there has to be a depth of knowing God that goes far beyond just getting saved. Paul spoke of this in Ephesians when he prayed that the Ephesian Christians would come to know the height, length, depth, and breadth of God’s love (Eph. 3:18-19).
He said something very interesting in Ephesians 3:19:
“And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
At first glance this seems confusing. How can we know something if it passes knowledge? How on earth does knowing transcend knowledge. Again in my 37 years I have found out that there are things we know by studying and educating the mind or the brain, but then there are those that we know that we know that we know that we know… this is the experiential knowledge. Knowing by interaction and intuition.
Paul is speaking about experiencing God’s love in a way that is infinitely greater than mere intellectual knowledge. And notice that when we experience God’s love in this way, we will be filled with all the fullness of God. What a statement!
All we have to do is look at our lack of experiencing God’s fullness in order to realize we don’t know God’s love the way Paul described it. If we did, we would be filled with all His fullness. Therefore, there is a dimension to knowing God that the average Christian hasn’t experienced. This is where you know God by faith rather than by carnal Manifestations. You know His heart and you have a deep consciousness of His presence in you. Thinking about how the creator of Heaven could Fit into a physical body and manifest on earth as Jesus Christ should help you in understanding that now He dwells inside you and its not something you need to prove in the physical but by faith you choose to believe God’s Word.
How then do we get there?
First of all, we have to realize that there is more to knowing God than just becoming a Christian. Multitudes of people have received salvation, and if they were to die, they would go straight into the presence of the Lord, without knowing God.
They don’t know that He loves them because He is love and not because they are lovely. They think they have to earn God’s favor, and they are needlessly suffering condemnation and lack of fellowship with Him because they feel unworthy. They don’t know Him as a loving heavenly Father but see Him as a harsh taskmaster, or the mean Judge.
Many Christians think our Father is the source of all their troubles and suffering. They think He uses those problems as tools to teach them something or change their behavior, even though the Word clearly proves the opposite (James 1:13). They don’t know their God as Healer or Provider, or in any other of the ways He manifests Himself to them. Truly, God’s people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge about Him (Hos. 4:6).
Much of the blame for this falls on the church. The Bible says in Romans 10:17,
“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
The church, as a whole, has proclaimed that Jesus died for us to keep us from going to hell. Now, that’s true and quite a benefit. If that’s all there was to salvation, that’s more than we deserve. I would emphasize that message if that was all there was, but that’s not what the Scripture teaches.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
That verse specifically says the goal of salvation is “everlasting life.” And everlasting life was defined by Jesus in John 17:3, which says,
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
I REPEAT ETERNAL LIFE IS NOT JUST LIVING LIFE WITHOUT END, BUT IT IS KNOWING THE ONLY TRUE GOD AND JESUS CHRIST, PERIOD!!
Knowing God the Father and Jesus Christ is eternal life. That doesn’t start when we go to heaven. Knowing God (eternal life) is something we can have right now (John 3:36).
The word “know” is used in Scripture to describe the relationship between a man and his wife that produces a child (example: Gen. 4:1) – knowing is used in the same sense as sexual intercourse. It is speaking of intimacy. So “knowing God” is speaking of intimacy with Him, not in the raw physical sense but in a deep and spiritual way by faith.
To receive salvation and then stumble through life without experiencing intimacy with the Lord is to miss or ignore the most important part of what Jesus provided. Let me put it this way: if you received forgiveness through the sacrifice of Jesus and then continue on without an intimate, personal, close relationship with God, then according to John 3:16, you are missing the real purpose of salvation. This is where the vast majority of Christians live. You cannot be living by faith.
People believe they need to get saved because that’s the message they’ve heard. So they get saved and then they get stuck. They aren’t hearing that knowing.
God is the real goal or that it’s even attainable. They are waiting on the sweet by and by, but struggling in the rough here and now.
Knowing God in the way I’m discussing isn’t even on the radar screen of most Christians. They aren’t pursuing it and they aren’t experiencing it. It begs the question, how do we get started in our pursuit of intimacy with the Lord? We can begin by spending time getting to know Him through His Word.
The Apostle Peter said in 2 Peter 1:3-4,
“According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
It’s through the knowledge of God that we are able to receive all things that pertain to life and godliness. He has already given them, but it’s knowing Him that allows us to partake of His divine nature, to receive all His great and precious promises, and to escape the corruption of this world. What a deal!
Knowing the Word is knowing God. When you know Him through the Word, then as you behold His image that is being written on your Heart you get transformed from Glory to Glory until there is no difference between you and Him. I am talking about the transformation of your mindset, not your spirit man, because your spirit man is perfect and has the same identity and properties as God Himself. That’s the Kind of Intimacy God desires where your mind in the soulish realm concurs with His mind completely, because the two of you have become one. There also comes a time when more than just the word but His very essence and presence permeates within you and you know what His word says without even reading it.
Did you know that when you are in love with somebody and you have been communicating through letters, when finally you meet face to face, you do not need to continue writing letters. So am talking about an experience where you have had an experiential understanding of God that even without His word you know what He is saying because the two of you are so much in oneness that you know what He saying without reffering to His word per se.…. Hope you catch my drift.
Andrew Wommack Whose teachings I have become so fond of recently taught a new series that focuses on knowing God, and it expounds on many of the key things he has learned about God through the Scriptures. He expounds the real meaning of eternal life, how to see with our hearts clearer than with our physical eyes, and much more.
This is a series that may not sound really interesting on the surface, but it is one of the most important messages he teaches.
If you ever want to fulfill what God has called you to do, you must know Him personally, and I believe this message will make a huge difference in your relationship with the Lord.
One last thing, the bible says that the Just Shall live by faith. Unfortunately faith is one of those places we take short vactions to but arent living or dwelling there. We are supposed to walk by faith, not by sight or by physical senses - which is canality on its own.
The Apostle Paul put it this way in Philippians 3:8:
“Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the Excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”
Think of this: Paul wasn’t a loser. He hadn’t hit rock bottom with nowhere else to go. He wasn’t turning from a life of failure and counting that, as “dung.” He was one of the most educated and accomplished men of his day. He was the elite of the religious class. People knew him and they wanted to be like him.
Think of the most elite of our society today, guys with serious achievements. The kind of fellas that most Dads tell their sons to emulate in any society, and that was Paul for you. By then he was called Saul. I could think of a person like say Professor Balunywa or Patrick Bitature or even to the level of respectable socialites from the telecom companies in Uganda. That’s what you could equate to Paul or Saul at that time in his day.
You see Paul wasn’t writing just about the time before he was born again. Remember as Saul, Paul was the Chief-Harassing-Officer (CHO) of the Christians back then. He had been a Christian for decades at the time he wrote this. After He had gotten saved and having traveled the world and used of God as few men ever had or ever will be, Paul came to the point of Phil 3:10. After all that experience he was still seeking to know God more (Phil. 3:10).
Paul was saying that the best life had to offer and the greatest accomplishments and pursuits of any man, when compared to knowing God, ranked in the same category as manure. He was admitting that he hadn’t arrived but that he had left and was pressing toward that goal of knowing God more (Phil. 3:12-14).
In my 37 years of doing time on this earth so far, I have seen how people exalt qualifications and being very learned. They even hang their achievements on the wall and prefer to be called doctor this and doctor that, or bishop this and honorable that, or even the rightest Reverend Father blah blah blah… Anyway I am not bashing qualifications but Paul looked at similar achievements that he had attained and said they were nothing but dung, compared to knowing God. Whew Imagine that?
What does it say, when the man who wrote half of the New Testament was still pursuing knowing God decades after his conversion? Certainly there has to be a depth of knowing God that goes far beyond just getting saved. Paul spoke of this in Ephesians when he prayed that the Ephesian Christians would come to know the height, length, depth, and breadth of God’s love (Eph. 3:18-19).
He said something very interesting in Ephesians 3:19:
“And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
At first glance this seems confusing. How can we know something if it passes knowledge? How on earth does knowing transcend knowledge. Again in my 37 years I have found out that there are things we know by studying and educating the mind or the brain, but then there are those that we know that we know that we know that we know… this is the experiential knowledge. Knowing by interaction and intuition.
Paul is speaking about experiencing God’s love in a way that is infinitely greater than mere intellectual knowledge. And notice that when we experience God’s love in this way, we will be filled with all the fullness of God. What a statement!
All we have to do is look at our lack of experiencing God’s fullness in order to realize we don’t know God’s love the way Paul described it. If we did, we would be filled with all His fullness. Therefore, there is a dimension to knowing God that the average Christian hasn’t experienced. This is where you know God by faith rather than by carnal Manifestations. You know His heart and you have a deep consciousness of His presence in you. Thinking about how the creator of Heaven could Fit into a physical body and manifest on earth as Jesus Christ should help you in understanding that now He dwells inside you and its not something you need to prove in the physical but by faith you choose to believe God’s Word.
How then do we get there?
First of all, we have to realize that there is more to knowing God than just becoming a Christian. Multitudes of people have received salvation, and if they were to die, they would go straight into the presence of the Lord, without knowing God.
They don’t know that He loves them because He is love and not because they are lovely. They think they have to earn God’s favor, and they are needlessly suffering condemnation and lack of fellowship with Him because they feel unworthy. They don’t know Him as a loving heavenly Father but see Him as a harsh taskmaster, or the mean Judge.
Many Christians think our Father is the source of all their troubles and suffering. They think He uses those problems as tools to teach them something or change their behavior, even though the Word clearly proves the opposite (James 1:13). They don’t know their God as Healer or Provider, or in any other of the ways He manifests Himself to them. Truly, God’s people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge about Him (Hos. 4:6).
Much of the blame for this falls on the church. The Bible says in Romans 10:17,
“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
The church, as a whole, has proclaimed that Jesus died for us to keep us from going to hell. Now, that’s true and quite a benefit. If that’s all there was to salvation, that’s more than we deserve. I would emphasize that message if that was all there was, but that’s not what the Scripture teaches.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
That verse specifically says the goal of salvation is “everlasting life.” And everlasting life was defined by Jesus in John 17:3, which says,
“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
I REPEAT ETERNAL LIFE IS NOT JUST LIVING LIFE WITHOUT END, BUT IT IS KNOWING THE ONLY TRUE GOD AND JESUS CHRIST, PERIOD!!
Knowing God the Father and Jesus Christ is eternal life. That doesn’t start when we go to heaven. Knowing God (eternal life) is something we can have right now (John 3:36).
The word “know” is used in Scripture to describe the relationship between a man and his wife that produces a child (example: Gen. 4:1) – knowing is used in the same sense as sexual intercourse. It is speaking of intimacy. So “knowing God” is speaking of intimacy with Him, not in the raw physical sense but in a deep and spiritual way by faith.
To receive salvation and then stumble through life without experiencing intimacy with the Lord is to miss or ignore the most important part of what Jesus provided. Let me put it this way: if you received forgiveness through the sacrifice of Jesus and then continue on without an intimate, personal, close relationship with God, then according to John 3:16, you are missing the real purpose of salvation. This is where the vast majority of Christians live. You cannot be living by faith.
People believe they need to get saved because that’s the message they’ve heard. So they get saved and then they get stuck. They aren’t hearing that knowing.
God is the real goal or that it’s even attainable. They are waiting on the sweet by and by, but struggling in the rough here and now.
Knowing God in the way I’m discussing isn’t even on the radar screen of most Christians. They aren’t pursuing it and they aren’t experiencing it. It begs the question, how do we get started in our pursuit of intimacy with the Lord? We can begin by spending time getting to know Him through His Word.
The Apostle Peter said in 2 Peter 1:3-4,
“According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
It’s through the knowledge of God that we are able to receive all things that pertain to life and godliness. He has already given them, but it’s knowing Him that allows us to partake of His divine nature, to receive all His great and precious promises, and to escape the corruption of this world. What a deal!
Knowing the Word is knowing God. When you know Him through the Word, then as you behold His image that is being written on your Heart you get transformed from Glory to Glory until there is no difference between you and Him. I am talking about the transformation of your mindset, not your spirit man, because your spirit man is perfect and has the same identity and properties as God Himself. That’s the Kind of Intimacy God desires where your mind in the soulish realm concurs with His mind completely, because the two of you have become one. There also comes a time when more than just the word but His very essence and presence permeates within you and you know what His word says without even reading it.
Did you know that when you are in love with somebody and you have been communicating through letters, when finally you meet face to face, you do not need to continue writing letters. So am talking about an experience where you have had an experiential understanding of God that even without His word you know what He is saying because the two of you are so much in oneness that you know what He saying without reffering to His word per se.…. Hope you catch my drift.
Andrew Wommack Whose teachings I have become so fond of recently taught a new series that focuses on knowing God, and it expounds on many of the key things he has learned about God through the Scriptures. He expounds the real meaning of eternal life, how to see with our hearts clearer than with our physical eyes, and much more.
This is a series that may not sound really interesting on the surface, but it is one of the most important messages he teaches.
If you ever want to fulfill what God has called you to do, you must know Him personally, and I believe this message will make a huge difference in your relationship with the Lord.
One last thing, the bible says that the Just Shall live by faith. Unfortunately faith is one of those places we take short vactions to but arent living or dwelling there. We are supposed to walk by faith, not by sight or by physical senses - which is canality on its own.
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