Where Are You?
Do you know where you are?
This question was first asked in the garden after Adam had sinned and tried to hide himself from God. Of course, there’s no way anyone could ever hide from God because God sees everything. So the question was for Adam’s sake, not God’s.
In the letter to the Hebrews, we discover some communication that does not ask this question but rather answers it. It speaks of where believers are not brought to and positioned, but instead where they are brought to and positioned.
They were under threat of losing sight of what was made available to them in Christ. They were tempted to go back to the system of law observance and all the customs and traditions required to be convinced one was right with God.
In other words, they were under threat of losing their identity and failing to realize where they had been brought spiritually in Christ. They were under this threat because they had begun to lean on their own understanding once again. They had allowed themselves to think more according to their natural selves than to their spiritual selves.
To make the point clear, a contrast is made between what took place at the origin of the law and what takes place in Christ. The law came from a mountain that burned with fire, was covered in smoke, darkness, tempest, the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, and those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken due to their great fear. It was from that mountain that the law came forth.
When someone is born again through faith in Christ Jesus, they are brought to a place way different from that of the law.
Hebrew 12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, 23 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24 to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
In Christ, you are placed in this reality spiritually. You are born from heaven above. You are a heavenly citizen with a heavenly birthright. Your name becomes written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. You are brought to the city of the living God! You become part of the heavenly Jerusalem! You stand amid an innumerable company of angels! You are counted along with those who are among the church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, and you appear before God the Judge of all and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and you stand before Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and you do so based on the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than the blood of Abel.
Abel’s blood cried out from the ground before God for justice. The blood of Jesus cries out for mercy and grace and establishes forgiveness.
Ephesians 2:19 Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,
In Christ, we no longer are far away, distant, on the outside looking in, or not belonging. In Christ, we have been brought near! In Christ, we have left behind that far away, not fitting in, not a part identity, and have become fellow citizens! Once you know who you are and where you are, you live according to what you know to be true. What you think you know in the natural can be swallowed up in what you have become according to the Spirit. There is no condemnation for those who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
I encourage you today to know where you are according to the testimony of Scripture. Know what and who you are surrounded by, and know the truth about how you stand before Him! According to the new covenant truth, In Christ, you have been repositioned in life.
His Divine Nature
Do you know Jesus?
2Peter 1:2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, 3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, 4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Based on verse 2, by what means are grace and peace multiplied to you?
His divine power has given us “all” things that pertain to life and godliness. When Scripture speaks of divine power, I think of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit desires to develop your knowledge of God and our Lord and Savior Jesus so that you will know all that is available to you and escape the corruption that is in the world through lust.
I know this is a fact because of what it says in the verse. All things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue. Notice it says through the knowledge of Him (meaning Jesus), not you, not a method, not some other thing. The Holy Spirit is constantly seeking to bring us into deeper fellowship with Jesus and the Father. His greatest yearning is to bring us into unity with God.
How well do you know Jesus?
It’s easy to get so caught up in looking for methods, keys, and secret ways to get something you need that you fail to look to Jesus.
It says everything we need pertaining to life and godliness. What is meant by life here? What do you believe the word life includes?
Is it possible that the word life includes everything equated with life as we know it? Your spiritual, mental, and physical well-being, financial provision, relationships, etc. If this is the case, there must be places in the word of God that offer us promises in such areas. There are such promises! And all the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ!
If I were to go to your bank and deposit $100,000.00 in it and then tell you that you have that much money available to you, but you refuse to believe me, you will never access it. The same would be true if I discovered a cure for cancer and you desperately needed it, and I offered it freely. Unless you believe you will not benefit from it.
We already have everything that pertains to life and godliness! Christ, in a way, is our bank in these matters. He holds our account and keeps it full. It’s all there in Him! He offers it to us freely, but we have to believe Him to be able to access it, and we will struggle to believe Him if we are not getting to know Him as we should. By growing in our knowing Him, we have access to everything!
We even are made partakers of His divine nature. New Creations are heaven-born spiritual citizens of the kingdom. In Christ, we were made something that before did not exist. In Christ, we partake of His divine nature, but our souls must be caught up to what that means. This is why renewing the mind is of such great importance.
I encourage you to consider more deeply what it means to be a partaker of the divine nature and have the divine power at work in you. The more your soul gets washed in the truth of it, the more transformed you will live.
Grace For Grace
Feel like boasting?
John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:16 And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.
The first thing we should pay close attention to in these passages is how it describes the essence of Christ, whom the Father begot.
He is full of grace and truth.
The second thing is how it states His glory was beheld. The works that Jesus did were a manifestation of His glory.
The third thing is this matter of His fullness. Such as Jesus had He gave. Jesus gave out of His fullness.
The fourth thing is the matter of grace for grace, as it is the primary focus of today’s encouragement.
You see, grace is unmerited favor. It is favor you cannot earn.
The term grace for grace is akin to being told you were given favor to get favor. Many have sought to define it as favor stacked upon favor.
No matter how you choose to look at it, it is an extraordinary gift to be given. These two verses of Scripture describe what I believe to be one the most precious and great revelations there is.
We are given insight into who Jesus is, what Jesus is like, and what Jesus has done for us.
Jesus personified the goodness and generosity of God the Father. Jesus demonstrated the willingness of God to be a great benefactor and to bless.
To assure this reality for those of us who would believe Jesus gave favor to us for us to have favor.
Ephesians 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
I brought nothing any greater or any more than another in which I could boast it would turn the eye of God to me more so than another. I have nothing by which to boast other than His goodness and generosity towards me. You are in the same boat I am in regarding this matter. Neither of us has anything to boast about concerning earning favor from God.
Our privilege of having His fullness and the favor to have favor is purely a gift rooted in His goodness and generosity, which is freely given to all who will believe. In this is revealed God’s amazing love, goodness, and generosity. Grace for grace brings us boldly before Him at the throne of grace to find mercy to help in our time of need.
I encourage you to always take advantage of what has so freely and generously been given to you in Christ Jesus. I implore you today not to waste your grace for grace!
Being Loved
Do you know what love looks like?
It is now 2023 and this coming November 8th, I look forward to celebrating 37 years of marriage to the most incredible woman on the planet. I love her, and she loves me, although I am not sure why she loves me or chose to love me in the first place, but she does.
Now the way I know she loves me is proven each day in manifold ways. It started with a promise to love me before we married, and then she stated it in a vow when we married.
But her demonstration of loving me goes much further than words, just as my demonstration transcends words.
We have made many promises to one another over these many years of being together.
Just like in my marriage, we must experience the fulfillment of a promise because it makes love much more real.
There is so much more to being in a relationship with God than having a singular promise of heaven one day.
Great and precious promises throughout Scripture are now ours through Christ.
2 Corinthians 1:20 For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.
Do you know the promises you are permitted to stand in faith upon?
The promises are what draws on the character and power of God. God uses the promises in our lives to avail Himself in tangible ways to us so we can be encouraged in our belonging to Him and know His goodness.
Paul wrote to the Philippians, acknowledging their generosity towards him while he was in prison for the gospel. In that communication, he declares,
Philippians 4:19 And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
This is a promise of God that Paul stood on for himself and is now declaring over the Philippians, and it is our promise as well.
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
Jesus said this knowing He would soon ascend to heaven but send the Holy Spirit to baptize them and be with them all their days here on earth until He would accompany them to their appearance before the throne in heaven.
To have the Holy Spirit in tangible ways is the same as having Jesus because God is one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are God, and to have one with you is to have all with you because they are in perfect unity. Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit for a purpose. It was to fulfill His promise to baptize us with the Holy Spirit and fire.
I meet believers in Jesus who struggle greatly because they have not yet tapped into the promise of being baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire. When the power of the Spirit comes in and over you and His fire purges your soul in ways you could never achieve on your own, you are transformed, and you experience what it means to partake of His divine nature in a whole new way. This fulfillment of a promise is an act of being loved by Him. His love is there and looks to land on an open, receptive heart. I encourage you to be open to being loved by Him today.
Partakers - Through These
What are you partaking of?
2 Peter 1:2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, 3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, 4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Believers in Jesus are given the privilege of partaking in God’s divine nature. But this partaking in the divine nature is imparted to us through certain means.
His divine power has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness, but we realize the reality of possessing such things as we grow in our knowledge of Jesus, who called us by glory and virtue.
All these amazingly wonderful things are given to us by His divine power. The administrator of His divine power is the Holy Spirit. So the power of God at work in salvation, which is a supernatural work that brings us into His eternal life and causes us to come alive, although we were once spiritually dead, also imparted an ability to embrace godliness.
It is through this life and godliness that we receive freely when we come alive in Christ that we inherit the promises. All the promises of God are yes, and amen in Christ to the glory of God! It pleased God that we should inherit the promises through Christ. The promises belong to you and me in Christ, not by way of our own merit. Just as salvation is not by means of merit on our part, the promises are not ours according to merit.
The promises are very important too! The promises are what God uses to impart to us His divine nature in a very real and tangible sense. When you and I tap into a promise of God through faith in Christ, we experience in our time and space the working of God on our behalf, and it imparts to us a solid sense of belonging to Him and knowing He is working for us, in us and through us.
Being a partaker of the divine nature involves receiving and walking in the promises.
It is through the promises that we become partakers of His divine nature. You see, it was by believing one of the promises that you even were born again and rescued from death to life in Christ. Eternal life is one of the promises, and you benefitted from that promise when you came to Jesus in faith. If all Peter was talking about was the promise of eternal life in Christ, it would say we were made partakers of the divine nature through the promise instead of saying exceedingly great and precious promises. Making the application plural when it comes to promises means there’s more we have been given in Christ.
So the idea of being a partaker is not a one-time sense here. It is an ongoing idea being conveyed. I could be offered a cake, take one bite and then go away and say honestly, I partook of the cake, but by possessing the cake, I am given the privilege to take more than just one bite. I can continue to experience that cake beyond just that first bite.
That is the general idea of this communication in 2 Peter. We escaped the corruption that is in this world through lust when God supernaturally changed our hearts when we came to Christ. We were made the very righteousness of God in Christ and became alive spiritually. We were translated from the kingdom of darkness into His marvelous kingdom of light. He altered our desires and opened our eyes to greater things than what this world has to offer.
To continue experiencing Him the way He intends for us to do so, we need to be believing and receive the exceedingly great and precious promises that are offered to us in Christ. It is through these that we are made partakers of Him in an ongoing sense. I encourage you today to lay hold on the promises! Walk in a continual experience of Him in all His goodness!
New Covenant Gathering
What kind of gathering would you like to be part of?
Have you been born again?
Have you been baptized with the Holy Spirit?
Do you believe confidently that the Holy Spirit is always with you?
Then what could prohibit Him from blessing, equipping, encouraging, convicting, offering gifts, or moving supernaturally just as He pleases in your life?
As vessels, we are meant to carry Him and submit to Him; we are the only way He can be prohibited. When we refuse to believe He is present, or we refuse to receive by faith whatever He wants to do in and through us, it limits what He wants to and would do.
As believers in Christ, we are the contact point for the Holy Spirit. We are like an electrical wire “of sorts” that carries the flow of current that He is in His power.
Every gathering we engage in should be electrified with His presence because we all carry His presence into that gathering and come to it prepared to allow Him to flow through us to others.
Born-again, Spirit-filled believers can’t gather in Jesus’ name without the Holy Spirit being present.
Whether or not His presence is discernable is determined by the level of surrender and participation of each believer present.
If you expect to see the Holy Spirit active and tangible in a gathering, you should attend prepared to be surrendered to His will and eager to receive whatever He wishes to bring forth. You should attend with expectation according to faith that He is real and appointed to be with you and others who are born again.
When that level of attitude and belief spreads through a fellowship, the Holy Spirit can accomplish much more than just the ordinary run-of-the-mill predictable Sunday gathering.
There is a contagious manifestation of power among those gathered with such expectations and attitudes.
The higher the level of faith and expectation at a gathering, the greater the work of the Spirit in the lives of those gathered. We are meant to be catalysts for the work of the Spirit. When we come in expectation with a heart of surrender to His desire, we affect the atmosphere we are part of and become a miracle looking for a place to happen.
I do not just want to attend; I want to be a part of and make a difference in how it turns out for all who come. I want to partake and participate in authentic New Covenant Gathering. I trust you do as well, so I encourage you to take advantage of every opportunity, especially since the day of Jesus’ return draws nearer.
Hope Of Glory
What do you hope for?
Colossians 1:27 To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Glory is the quest of every believer in Christ, yet it is our possession already in Christ.
The fact is that without Christ, there could be no glory for anyone. But when one is born again, the hope of glory is made alive.
Praise you, Jesus, for bringing many sons into glory!
Hebrews 2:10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Jesus was made complete through His obedience in embracing suffering according to the will of the Father to bring redemption and make salvation a reality for all who would believe.
I read this passage and thought Jesus was already perfect and sinless. This is true. But He still had to push through the temptations of the flesh to abandon the ultimate sacrifice and suffering before Him, which was the cross.
Jesus surrendered to suffering in the flesh, which perfected His obedience. It brought things to their conclusion as His obedience took Him to that final step of the cross.
Jesus prayed something very powerful for all of us.
John 17:22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.
This is the glory! Oneness of relationship with God as a whole in unity with Him. Jesus declared that the glory He had shared with the Father in oneness would be magnified again and then passed on to us who put our faith in Him.
I love how Jesus prayed that the world would know the Father had sent hIm and loves us the same as He loves Jesus! That’s some glory right there!
You are loved like Jesus is when you are born again in Christ!
John 17:24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
Jesus is looking forward to the time when all things are complete, and we are forever with Him, witnessing the splendor of the unity of the godhead at the throne! But please just take a moment and consider that Jesus is declaring He was loved before the foundation of the world. He has prayed we would be loved as He is loved, and that, my friend, means that you and I, too, were loved before the foundation of the world in Christ!
Is your hope of glory alive and well? It should be! In Christ, it is your privilege to possess it.
Offended By Jesus?
Are you offended by Jesus?
In John 10 of the Bible, we discover that there were some Jews who wanted Jesus to come out and say something extremely direct to convince them of who He was.
John 10:25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. 26 But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you. 27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.
The problem with the works Jesus did is that they often offended the religious leaders based on how they were done and to whom they were done.
Have you ever loved someone a bit odd? Every found yourself hanging with a person that others struggled with? The ones thought of as being respectable, and leaders had problems with?
That is what it was like for Jesus’ disciples. They followed Jesus because they were His sheep and could hear His voice. In other words, the parables Jesus spoke made sense to them and, if not, were explained by Jesus. They got Jesus while others did not.
John 6:61 When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. 65 And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.” 66 From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. 67 Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?”
Jesus had just spoken something that could only be understood correctly according to the Spirit. Because it could only be understood correctly according to the Spirit, the ones who were not truly His were offended by His saying.
You see, they could not see what Jesus was saying because they were limited only to their own analytical way of thinking. So when Jesus said my flesh is food, and my blood is drink, they took Him literally in a natural sense. This greatly offended them because, in their mind, that was cultish and cannibalistic. Still today, many things are taken wrongly because of people not thinking according to the Spirit as opposed to in the natural.
When you encounter Jesus as He is presented in Scripture with the notion that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, are you offended? This is why the need for the Holy Spirit is so important.
1Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Jesus is still doing things that can be difficult to explain to a naturally-minded person. If your goal is to make sense, you might also be offended. I encourage you not to be offended by Jesus in any way and to avoid letting your goal be to make sense to everyone, no matter who they are. Love Jesus and never be ashamed of how controversial He can be to those who lack understanding.
Holy Spirit Significance
What are you full of?
Some things are important enough that you cannot overstate their significance.
Acts 6:3 Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business;
In the first church, when they had practical needs that required logistical solutions and proper oversight of those solutions, they appointed seven men to serve as deacons.
In other words, a man could not serve in practical oversight without being of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. Overseeing the food ministry to widows required these qualifications.
Today, sadly, many churches have far lesser standards for leadership in both the practical and the spiritual areas. This is not wise.
When we understand just how untrustworthy and unreliable the strength of the flesh is, we realize how dependent upon the Holy Spirit we should be.
The Holy Spirit is not optional to someone who truly understands the work of salvation and the reason for it. We not only grasp how sinful we were before coming to Jesus but also realize how powerless we were to do anything about our condition. We grasp how great our need for the help and empowerment of the Spirit is.
Acts 9:17 And Ananias went his way and entered the house; and laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you came, has sent me that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
When Saul, who later was named Paul and became a great apostle for Jesus, had a supernatural encounter on the Damascus Road, I do not know anyone who would say that after Jesus knocked him off his horse and confronted him that Saul was not saved.
Here we find that after Saul was born again, he was taken to a house where he waited for the next thing God had for him. God sent a man to Saul to restore his sight and fill him with the Holy Spirit. Jesus was willing to appear to Saul to redeem him supernaturally but determined that Saul would need another believer who was filled with the Holy Spirit to lay hands on him for him to receive his sight again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Even our Lord and Savior Jesus needed the Holy Spirit to do His mission on earth.
Acts 10:38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.
If Jesus needed to be anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power, would our need for such be lesser? Like Saul, we need to see and be filled. Like the deacons in the first church, we need to be full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. Like Jesus, we need to be anointed with the Holy Spirit and power. I encourage you today to seek to be filled afresh with the person and the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish your mission from God. His purpose will require the aid of the Holy Spirit in you and upon you to be accomplished at the level and in the way He desires. I encourage you to ask to be filled afresh today.
Abounding
Are you possessing the benefits of the kingdom?
Romans 14:17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
The Kingdom of God is three things! The three things affect us directly. We are forever changed by the righteousness we received as a gift when we believed. Jesus gave us His peace, not peace like the world understands peace, but His very own peace. We possess joy in the Holy Spirit.
Now if that were not enough, Paul also prayed the following.
Romans 15:13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Fill you with all joy and peace! Fill you! Fill you! Why?
So that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is your destiny to abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Your abounding in hope can only be realized by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is through the working of the Holy Spirit that hope is awakened within the heart and soul because, in the working of the Spirit, God is made even more real to us, even though we cannot see Him with our natural eyes.
Every time I have experienced the tangible power of the Spirit, it has produced in me great hope and even stronger expectation with regard to the promises of God based on who He is and what He has spoken.
This is why Holy Spirit encounters make such a profound difference in the lives of believers.
Holy Spirit encounters produce in us the realization of the righteousness, peace, and joy that is meant to be experienced by us as part of the salvation promise in Christ. It is what brings the manifestation of the kingdom forward in our experience.
I’ve never met a freshly filled by the Spirit believer who wasn’t joyful, at peace, and confident in their relationship with God. That is true even when their circumstances are unfavorable at the moment.
1Peter 1:8 (Jesus) whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,
Those convinced by the Spirit have this reality working in them. Are you empowered to rejoice in the unseen? It is the work of the Holy Spirit to seal, confirm and empower believers with kingdom reality.
I encourage you today to ask the Holy Spirit to manifest the reality of the kingdom in you. I encourage you to be bold and, by faith, ask Him to fill you afresh and empower you for kingdom purpose. We are not disappointed when we ask such things in faith, expecting to receive. He is ready to empower you today to walk in the righteousness, peace, and joy that is the kingdom!
On Mission
What is your mission?
Luke 9:56 For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”
Luke 19:9 And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; 10 for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
The Jesus in me and the Jesus in you desires to encounter those who do not yet know Him and have not yet surrendered themselves to Him.
Jesus is still on a mission and will be on a mission until the end comes. His mission is to seek and to save. He did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.
Jesus is not afraid of sinners. Thank God He is not because had that been the case, I would not be saved today and would not know what it is like to have my sins forgiven past present, and future.
I would not know what it is like to be made clean by the blood of the Lamb. I would not know what it is like to be set free by the power of His atoning sacrifice, and I would know the glory of being made righteous with the very righteousness of God.
More than that, I would not be able to know the power of the presence of the Holy Spirit, who fills me to overflowing measure and causes rivers of living water to flow out of me toward others.
John 7:38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
When I am on mission with Jesus, letting Him be Him through me and surrendering to the work of the Spirit, I find there is a flow of the power of the Spirit that can powerfully touch others.
All the resources of heaven become available to me because no soldier goes to war at his own expense. His expenses are taken care of by the ones who enlisted him.
Jesus promised that if I seek His kingdom and His righteousness first, all the other things I might ever need will be taken care of for me. I have experienced that in my life many times over.
I trust that you have had that experience as well. There are adventures in the Spirit for all who will go on a mission with Jesus. You can be on mission right where you are right now. We are called to be His witnesses, and I encourage you to find a way to surrender to the Spirit and share the life you have received in Christ with someone you encounter today.
Jesus is still wanting to seek and to save that which was lost. He wants to do it through us.
Cling To What Is Good
Want good in your life?
Romans 12:9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.
In Greek, the word cling was used to interpret the meaning of glue, cleave, join (Self), or keep company.
Good simply means good. We all know what good means. It is that which is of benefit, well.
Basically, the word of God is telling us to join ourselves, glue ourselves, and keep company with what is good.
Now someone might say ice cream is good! But can you join yourself to it? Is it really of much benefit? Is it something you wish to be glued to? So we know that is not the kind of good we are dealing with in this passage. Besides, they didn’t even have ice cream then.
So what good might we be dealing with here?
When a rich young ruler called Jesus “good teacher,” Jesus responded with,
Mark 10:18 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.
Jesus made it clear that only God is truly good. So I am prepared to accept that anything involving God (The Triune God) would be good.
Paul stated, “In my flesh dwells no good thing.” So we know the good spoken of in this passage is not to be found in our strength and existence. It is from a source other than ourselves.
So the Father is good, the Son is good, and the Holy Spirit is good, and they are sources other than ourselves.
The next rhetorical question would be, are each of these persons of the Godhead beneficial to us? To meet the whole definition of good, a benefit must be involved.
We are loved by the Father so much that He gave His only begotten Son so that if we believe in Jesus, we will inherit eternal life.
We are loved by Jesus so much that He was willing to lay down His life to pay for our sin past, present, and future and make us righteous with the very righteousness of God.
We are loved by the Holy Spirit so much that He was willing to come and dwell here on earth with us until we are all caught to be with God at the end of time as we know it.
Our current interaction with God involves the work of the Holy Spirit, who reminds us of all that Jesus did to make our relationship with the Father possible. He also empowers us to be witnesses for Jesus and Ambassadors for the kingdom.
So I would think that following the advice of Romans, we should be glued, clave, join ourselves and keep company with the Holy Spirit.
We need the fire of the Spirit operating in our lives continually. It is the only way for us to do all we are advised to do in the word of God under the New Covenant.
When we speak with others, we need to be able to genuinely offer them words seasoned with grace and full of the fire of the Holy Spirit so that they, too, might realize the good of God available in Jesus Christ.
I encourage you today to cling to what is good! Seek to allow the Holy Spirit to operate fully in and through you today and every day according to faith and trusting He is good and what you need! He is meant to be our companion, comforter, adviser, and empowerer. Be joined to Him!
Abhor Evil
What do you hate?
Romans 12:9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.
To abhor something means to regard it with disgust and hatred. The actual Greek meaning is to detest utterly.
This statement is in step with what is spoken in the Psalms and Proverbs.
Psalm 97:10 You who love the LORD, hate evil! He preserves the souls of His saints; He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.
Proverbs 8:13 The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.
Yes, it is true that God never changes, and He does not need to repent because He makes no mistakes and is sinless and perfect in all His ways. God is holy. He has nothing He needs to apologize for.
When the Bible speaks of the fear of the Lord, it is not talking about being afraid of God. It communicates the wisdom of respecting and honoring God, which begins with hating evil.
Hating evil is something God does because of how good and perfect He is and how destructive evil is. Evil devalues and seeks to destroy all that is good and holy. It is not the New Covenant to teach a tolerance of evil. With all of its grace, the New Covenant does not condone evil.
The New Covenant promotes all that is good by the goodness of God on display through Jesus, His Son.
Evil cannot be pretended away. Nor can it be allowed to exist without being utterly detested and opposed.
The basis of evil is described for us in Scripture.
Jeremiah 18:12 And they said, “That is hopeless! So we will walk according to our own plans, and we will everyone obey the dictates of his evil heart.”
Hebrews 3:12 Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God;
When they think of evil, many imagine the wickedness of Satanism or some other very debased example but ignore the evil of a heart of unbelief.
I abhor unbelief because it defies the testimony of God’s goodness, ability, and willingness. It questions all the good God has already done and desires to do and the great things He wants to accomplish through His church.
God was angry with the generation of Israel that first came out of Egypt because they would not believe His promise to give them an inheritance of rest. They could have known rest but questioned God when they gave more credence to their circumstances than they did to His word of promise. The New Covenant does not condone unbelief, as it requires belief to receive it.
Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
God is a rewarder! Those who believe diligently seek Him. I encourage you today to abhor what is evil. Unbelief is evil! Let’s exercise the fear of the Lord together and tell unbelief to take a hike and begin to lay hold on His word of promise and diligently seek and hope like we are created to in Christ.
Love Without Hypocrisy
Genuine love matters
Romans 12:9 Let love be without hypocrisy……
To consider this, we must first let ourselves visit the idea of what we perceive love to be in the first place.
On the supernatural, or what many might define as being the Spiritual front of loving, you can prophesy, but you're a clinking cymbal without love.
But in the natural or what many define as the practical application of love, you could also give your body to be burned, but without love, it is useless.
So your “love” can be hypocritical when expressed practically or through a spiritual gift based on the motive.
The difference between serving someone in a practical area according to a felt need versus serving them through a spiritual gift is who will ultimately get the credit.
You are not the source for supernatural gifting; it is obvious that it comes from God. There will always be something powerful in discovering that God is for you when you struggle. That is what Holy Spirit birthed ministry does for people. It communicates that God is for them even in the midst of their trials and struggles.
But if you only utilize a more practical approach, you can be thought of as the source to give money, time, talent, resources, etc.
That is why it can be wise to bless others practically whenever possible through the church. Anonymity can be great wisdom and keep the focus off oneself as the source and direct the focus towards God whenever used in the practical.
Regardless of whichever avenue of loving we find ourselves engaged in, we should seek to employ love with hypocrisy, and to do that, the other person’s best interest and what is most needed based on God’s wisdom should always win out.
When love is without hypocrisy, it is never contingent on what the person receiving can offer in return. It is not, “You scratch my back, and I will scratch yours.”
According to the kingdom’s culture, loving others begins with getting over oneself enough to be used by the Holy Spirit in the gifts. The Holy Spirit can do more for a person than I ever could in my strength and wisdom.
Some might be more inclined to think of loving others only in a more practical way. In both expressions of love, we must get over ourselves and surrender to the will of God in the matter.
People need Jesus and the aid of the Holy Spirit more than they need anything else in this life. So when it comes to the work of the Spirit, you must first be convinced that it is true that the Spirit is of greater benefit to someone before you will desire to be available as a conduit. You were created to be a conduit for the work of the Spirit.
A gift of the Spirit that breaks through all that is happening in a person’s life and encourages and energizes them in their faith can lead to a practice of freedom that eliminates the perpetual felt needs they are experiencing. People need Jesus, and they need the power of the Spirit! Nothing can take the place of the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
I encourage you today to love others without hypocrisy, surrendering to the Spirit so you can touch others in powerful ways that will greatly bless them.
Use It
Are you using your gift?
Romans 12:6 Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them:
Have you ever put in much effort to do your best to bless someone you love with that special gift only to discover later that they never used it?
How did that make you feel?
Did it inspire you to get them another gift?
Sometimes a person will ask for more from the Lord even though they’ve not put the gift grace gave them to use.
Use the gifts that “grace” gave to you!
Use it according to the proportion of faith you have for it too!
It is most beneficial to operate in your gift area according to the grace you receive and the measure of faith you have to move in it.
You may have a similar gift to someone else, but you haven’t used it enough to mature to the point that you’ve seen another person move in it. If you pretend you are where they are already, that is not in proportion to your faith.
At the same time, the Holy Spirit may want to stretch you in your faith about it and move you to get a little beyond the boundary with it. But being stretched, and pretending to be at a place you’re not, are two different things.
So I encourage you to use the gift grace gave you at the faith level you now have.
The gift grace gives you can be increased just as muscle can be strengthened with use; so can the gift be honed and strengthened with us.
If I haven’t worked out in a very long time, I can’t just show up at a gym, load up a barbell with 200lbs of weight, and think I will bench press it like it is nothing.
My ability to handle more weight is increased through use with repetition.
The more you step out in the gift you receive from grace, the more it increases and abounds. The Lord rewards your willingness to use what He gives you generously.
So be encouraged today to use what God has given you to bless others. You are a miracle looking for a place to happen based on the gift grace gave you. I urge you to use what you’ve received from God supernaturally to love others and be a blessing.
According To Grace
Do you know your gift?
Romans 12:6 Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us,
Here’s what we can know based on what God's word has just shown us.
We have gifts that are different according to the grace that is given to us.
You will have a different gift based on the grace you were given.
Your gift, even if similar to mine, will be different because you are you, and I am me.
There is a divine favor that sets a path for you according to whom God says you are.
God gifts you by His Spirit according to what only He can know about you.
I wonder if you have had my experience while driving lately. It seems many more people out there want to drive in my lane. They are partly in their lane and mine, and there’s no grace for that!
When they start easing into my lane, I get a little nervous because there’s no room in my lane for both of us, even when we are going in the same direction.
It’s not a peaceful easy feeling to see someone looking down at a phone and drifting into your lane. I am not comforted when someone leaves the grace of their lane to travel in my lane of grace. I am happiest in my lane of grace and when they stay in their lane of grace because then we can both safely travel.
Think of being given a lane that is all your own and going in the direction you need to travel as being your grace. When you use it, it is a great gift. But if you cross out of your lane into oncoming traffic or into the lane next to you where someone else is driving, you are no longer in the grace you were given, which is not good.
This is why knowing the grace you have been given is important. You need to travel in the lane of grace the Holy Spirit has given you!
Don’t try to outpace the grace, be thankful for what you have been given. It is right and good and enough for you. Settle into it and enjoy it. When you are flowing in His grace, which is life according to the Spirit, even the difficult things have an air of excitement.
You know He will bring you through to victory in whatever it is you are up against, but more than that, when you are doing life according to grace, you live in overflow and have something to impart to others. You become a conduit for blessing and impartation.
I encourage you today to know the gift that is yours according to the grace you were given and get into the flow of it.
More Glorious
What is your confidence rooted in?
2Corinthians 3:4 Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God. 5 It is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. 6 He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7 Now if the ministry that brought death, chiseled in letters on stones, came with glory, so that the Israelites were not able to gaze steadily at Moses’s face because of its glory, which was set aside, 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?
The ministry of Paul and others was a ministry of the new covenant. They understood they were privileged to minister according to the new covenant, which came with greater glory than the old.
As we read here, the old covenant, represented mainly by the ten commandments etched in letters on stone, was a ministry of death. The point is that although it was a ministry of death, it came with glory, so how much more glory accompanies the new covenant Jesus shed His blood to establish?
This is why it makes no sense for someone to have one foot in the old covenant and the other in the new. The new covenant is far superior to the old. It is not based on rules that condemn and lead us to death. It is based on the Spirit who gives life.
Because of this ministry of the Spirit, the new covenant is more glorious!
Colossians 2:13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
Jesus took the writings that condemned us out of the equation! He removed the ability of the enemy to use what was etched and written to condemn us any longer because our righteousness is not dependent upon us; it is imputed by faith in Christ to us.
There is no glory in going back under the law for righteousness, which is a simple way of saying going back under such rules for confidence in having a relationship with God.
We are to have our confidence in Christ and His finished work at the cross. We must be confident in the new covenant Jesus established, not our performance or the lack thereof.
Law-based performance thinking is subtle in many ways, and there are more who struggle with this than we might think. They look back over their day and try to assess if they did well based on what they believe the rules are. If they did well, they feel close to God; if they missed something, which is most often the case, they feel God is not pleased with them.
Under the new covenant, our best obedience is our confidence in Christ according to faith. Believing that Jesus is enough is a work of the Spirit. Having our confidence in Christ is pleasing to God. It is also transformative in ways rules can never produce because it energizes our lives with the power and the glory of the Spirit. What we have received in Christ is more glorious than anything that has existed. I encourage you to grow in enjoying what Jesus alone can supply.
The New Covenant
Which covenant are you in?
Hebrews 12:24 to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
By coming to Jesus, I came into better things than any other generation before His death had ever known. I am convinced that what I have been given in Christ is far better than anything Moses or any prophets preceding Christ knew.
Now I realize that someone might look at what I just said as me boasting and think of it as being a bit pretentious on my part. But it is true, and yes, I am boasting, but my boasting is of what Jesus has done in establishing His new covenant.
You know, each time I upgraded my vehicle, I let go of my older one. My purpose in upgrading to a newer one was that the older was had become necessary to replace. The same holds true with regard to a covenant. The old covenant had served its purpose, but it was time to be replaced.
Hebrews 8:13 In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
It has vanished away. The old is now replaced with the new. We are invited to live in the new covenant Jesus established by His blood. It does not make sense thought o live with one foot in the new and one foot in the old. That breeds confusion and double-mindedness.
I do not desire to question His goodness or His intentions toward me. The old covenant was a conditional covenant that relied on my own faithfulness and ability to keep commandments in order to be in a relationship with Him and experience His blessing.
The new covenant grafts me into a relationship with Him on the basis of the obedience of Jesus. This new covenant functions by faith in Jesus as opposed to having faith in myself.
Matthew 26:28 For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
My sins, past, present, and future, are completely taken away by the blood of Jesus. If He failed to pay for even one of my sins, then I cannot have a relationship that offers free and open access before the throne of grace where I might find mercy to help me in my time of need.
If I must rely on my own performance to merit such access, I am doomed. I have never met a morally perfect human being, and I do not boast that I am such a person myself. I have no confidence in my flesh, and I know that in my flesh, there is nothing good as it is not yet redeemed. This is why I depend on what Jesus did at the cross and put the whole weight of my faith on Him and His completed work so that I might enjoy the benefits of the relationship through this new covenant He established.
It is most important that a person settle which covenant they will operate under and make sure they do not try to operate under two covenants as opposed to just one. There is only one that is recognized by God now, and that is the one Jesus established. The other is now obsolete. I encourage you to make sure you have let go of the old covenant and enjoy the new covenant Jesus established. There’s great possibility in the new covenant, while only death awaits those under the old. I choose life and relationship according to my faith in Jesus.
True Kingdom Evidence
Do you know what the kingdom of God is like?
Mark 4:30 Then Jesus said, “To what shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it? 31 It is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth; 32 but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade.”
Here are some things to note about mustard trees. They are one of the fastest-growing garden trees there is. They can grow to a height of 30ft and spread their branches just as wide.
In other words, they are the kind of tree that can spring up and mature in a surprisingly small amount of time. They are self-reproducing too. They do not require bees and other animals to pollinate, but they do take advantage of such opportunities.
Their seed is only 2mm in diameter. So it is a tiny seed at that.
The idea of a mustard seed tree is that it becomes an invasive species once established. It towers above all the other herbs in a garden.
It is not by chance that Jesus chose this particular plant to give an example of what the Kingdom of God is like. When the kingdom of God is at work, it spreads, grows, reproduces, and becomes invasive. It rises above and can be easily seen among all the other endeavors. In other words, it is not hidden from view; it is not stagnating and lifeless and provides a haven.
On another occasion, the disciples of Jesus could not cast out a demon, and they asked Jesus why.
Matthew 17:20 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.
This coincides with Jesus’ example of the kingdom in that the idea of nothing being impossible would be in tandem with a fast-growing reproducing idea to the kingdom that is invasive and towers enough to be seen easily.
It only takes a little faith to do the impossible, cast out demons, move mountains, etc. Jesus did not mince words with His disciples in this matter. Because of their unbelief, they failed to exercise the authority they had been given. This is proven by the fact that had they had faith that was tiny, even a little faith; they could have done the impossible.
The evidence of the kingdom is in full view wherever faith is alive. Wherever there is faith, there is kingdom activity. Dead religion can exist on intellectual satisfaction but cannot produce the evidence of the kingdom, which makes the impossible possible. You can realize you can’t argue against something because it is true without it being of faith.
2 plus 2 equals 4. No one will argue that. But it doesn’t produce in everyone who agrees they could be a math expert and do amazing things. Jesus has brought possibility and opportunity into a place of existence unlike anything the human race has ever witnessed. The only way to experience what He offers is through faith in Him. Sometimes we first have to acknowledge our unbelief issue, as did the disciples, before we step into real faith. Real faith is not ours by a mere confession of it. It is ours through revelation from the Holy Spirit. I encourage you to ask Him to reveal what you need to see and believe most in your journey.
Victory!
Want to overcome?
1John 5:4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
Daniel 6:23 The king was exceedingly glad for him and commanded that they take Daniel out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no injury was found on him because he believed in his God.
Daniel had been thrown into a den of hungry lions and left there overnight. Daniel had continued to pray three times a day even though a legal decree declared that no one was to call on any man or god except for the king for thirty days.
Daniel knew God well enough to know he did not wish to go thirty days without talking with Him, even if it meant trouble for Daniel. Daniel was not in trouble for loving his routine. He was not willing to be persecuted for a routine or discipline. Daniel was willing to suffer because of his relationship with God. Daniel was not a legalistic do-gooder who feared that he would be judged if he did not pray. Daniel enjoyed his prayer time each day.
The faith that brings us to victory is not faith in things or what we imagine should be a solution. It is not faith in what we do, even though faith produces actions. It is not faith in our disciplines or our sense of right and wrong.
The faith that overcomes the world and brings us victoriously through every trial is grounded in the Lord Himself. Faith that fuels our relationship with God to start with is faith that overcomes the world.
Faith that results from knowing Jesus in a real and living way is victorious. It is the kind of faith that brings us into possibility and opportunity every day.
I want always to be found growing in my faith in Him. I want to be increasing in my knowledge of Him. I want to become so aware of who He is and what He is like that I can firmly stand in any situation unshaken and unmoved by the pressures being applied to get me to waffle even a little concerning what I know He has made me to be and to do.
To develop in this way, I ask the Holy Spirit daily to bring me into deeper fellowship and understanding in Jesus. I ask to know His will and purpose for me more clearly and grant me the boldness to embrace what it calls me into.
Living for Christ by being in Christ and not being ashamed to proclaim such truth anywhere and everywhere is not popular in these last days. Faith that overcomes the world isn’t concerned with being popular with the world. It is concerned with knowing and being known by God. That’s how I want to approach each day I am given. I trust it is your desire as well. Go in the riches of Him in Christ today and be filled with the treasure of the Holy Spirit to live boldly in the relationship Jesus died to make possible.