Spiritcode

Hope in Hard Times

HOPE IN HARD TIMES

There is only one thing that we have as human beings that God does not have – Limitations! 
Suffering is the human experience of our reaction to our limitations – When we can’t have what we want, when we can’t do what we want, when we can’t be what we want to be. Jesus came to live in the midst of our human limitations to resolve all of those problems. He did not come to remove them, but he gives us his unlimited risen self for us to rise above our suffering in the midst of them. 

1 Peter 4:12-14. My dear friends, don’t be shocked at circumstances coming your way that test you to the limit. Don’t think of this as being out of the ordinary as far as you’re concerned. You can be glad that you are going through the same sufferings that Jesus went through, so that when his power and glory shines through, you will be elated just to be there. You can also be elated if you get insulted for being a Christian because the power and nature of Jesus will be on display in your life. Their words might be putting Jesus down, but your life is raising him up.

Peter is telling us to not think of the unexpected as being something unexpected. If our expectation of what should happen to us always came to pass it would mean that we were in command of every one of the thousands of random events and the way that they collide with one another.
If we can believe that God is in command of all things, then we can have a proper expectation of him and not of ourselves. We do not become the saviour of our situation, but he does. We see his power and love having sway in our lives by our faith, instead of the erratic and unpredictable circumstances having sway over us, even though they are on display.  

Heb 2:8 ‘He put all things in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death now crowned with glory and honour.
Jesus is now upholding all things that are happening in your life by the word of his power – If we are ignorant of that then it has no personal meaning. If known and believed in this is cause for an elevated disposition of hope (elation). Your heart and soul become bonded to the hope of Jesus in action rather than the grief and disorder of the world, releasing us to live in and with - the purposes of God.

2 Corinthians 4:16 So we don’t lose heart. Even when our outward life changes for the worse, our inner life continually grows stronger. Our experience of affliction and suffering releases a flow of God’s glory in the midst of everything that happens around us, as we discover the inner life realities of the unseen world. We are not fixed upon the changeable nature of the outward life. 

With this understanding we can unconditionally embrace this present moment no matter what the physical or psychological content is. This is how a new pathway of truth is formed in the spirit of the mind, and once we hold on to that pathway of truth, we then choose how to deal with the outer situation. 
As we learn to live consciously with him, we can ‘lose’ our ‘it’s all about me-self’ and find our ‘true self’ of faith in God. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  (Matthew 16:25)
limitations can now be met and endured with faith and hope and acceptance. 
We can go with the flow of what is happening, by faith - giving thanks to God in all things (1Thessalonians 5:13) and living in the hope and expectation of what God is doing in the midst of it all. There can also be times when we need to resist something wrong and call it out.
God will give us the grace to know the appropriate acceptance or resistance to a situation and the right timing on how and when to do what we need to do. 
A ‘no’ to what somebody wants from you is just as obedient to God as a ‘yes’ if you know the heart of the matter. Jesus said no to the Pharisees when they wanted to penalize him for healing on the Sabbath, but he said yes to Pontius Pilate when he ordered his execution.

JOB -He deserves a mention here, if we’re talking about hard times.
God allowed Job to see that he was in the midst of all the sufferings that Job was going through and that he as God was in control of everything that was happening. God was in control of what Satan could and could not do. God was in control of all creation, and he discusses this with Job. He challenges Job to consider where he himself stood, as a good man, in regard to being fully in charge of his own destiny. ‘What do you know, Job?’

Job 38:4 Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? – 12. Have you commanded the morning since your days began, And caused the dawn to know its place? 16 Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Or have you seen the doors of the shadow of death? Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this.
God finishes by asking Job "Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him?
He who rebukes God, let him answer it." (Job 40:1)

God continues with his revelation to Job of many other wondrous examples of his creation of the Universe and everything in it. This gives Job a new perspective on things, and Job finally answers God.
Job 42:1 Then Job answered the LORD and said: "I know that You can do everything,
And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, who is this who ignorantly offers advice?' Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. So, listen, please, and let me speak; You said, you would question me, and I would answer You.'
‘And I say. I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now mine eye seeth You.

Job was now seeing an unlimited God through the eyes of pure faith. He came to his senses and received hope from God – and he wasn’t even given the inner life of God through Jesus that we are given - to guide us and lead us and become our wisdom. 
Job wasn’t even under the Old Covenant - He wasn’t even a Jew. This shows how God can intervene in the life of any person at any time and in any age, covenant or no covenant. Our faith tells us that all things are under the feet of Jesus, and even though we still see chaos and disorder around us we see Jesus – within us. 
We see with eyes of faith. 
As Job said. ‘I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You.’

God asks us, like he did to Job, to take stock of where we are with our faith - What do we actually believe in and put our hope in. Our minds are continually constructing a pathway of belief that shapes our inner lives with our feelings and emotions and decision making. We are either letting the outward circumstances form these pathways or we allow the inner work of the Holy Spirit lead us into the truth of Christ in us - working in us and for us and through us.
Paul said Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you? (2Corinhians 13:5)

I’m now continuing with that Scripture we began with that Peter wrote, which ended with ‘You can also be elated if you get insulted for being a Christian because the power and nature of Jesus will be on display in your life. Their words might be putting Jesus down, but your life is raising him up.
Peter then goes on to say towards the end of the passage.
19. So if you go through difficult times that you know God has allowed to come upon you, walk on with God and trust him as your creator to faithfully look after the well-being of your soul.

There’s a secret here in this Scripture, a mystery, a hidden treasure as usual, which declares the reality of a life lived with God. It’s the story of the Gospel again - one of its ten thousand reasons - a process of faith as always – putting off the old self and putting on the new self.
We lose ourselves in order to find ourselves. We admit we are wrong like Job, so we can be declared right in Jesus. We are strongest when we’re weakest. We can have hope when enduring suffering instead of learning to just get over it or complain about it. 
Mostly we are taken into God’s purpose with no awareness of it at all. We have no idea what God’s immediate goal may be in certain situations, and as we continue to trust him, his purpose may become even more vague. God’s purpose may appear to have missed the mark that we would have set, because we often see different targets to what he sees. We see things to be done, and we ask for his help to let us do our thing, while he sees a son or a daughter becoming more and more one with him and being in his purpose. If we have a set and determined purpose of our own, it can destroy the simplicity and the calm, relaxed pace which should be characteristic of the child of God that is growing into maturity.
So, if we are in oneness with God and recognize that he is taking us into his purposes, then we will no longer become anxious to find out what his purposes are because we trust him to be doing the best there is for us – doing exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.
(Ephesians 3:20) - We let him surprise us.
As we grow in faith and hope it becomes simpler to us, because we are less inclined to say, “I wonder why God allowed this or that?” And we begin to see that the compelling loving purpose of God lies behind everything in life, and that God is divinely shaping us into oneness with his ways. We can now trust in hope for the knowledge and the wisdom of God, not in our own abilities. When we pursue closeness to God by spending time in his presence, we will see God’s commitment to doing for us what is for our good – it will be revealed to us - in his time, and in his way. 

 

 

 

Power and Love and an Ordered Mind

POWER LOVE AND AN ORDERED MIND

2Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of an ordered mind.

When Paul writes this letter to Timothy, he had been abandoned by many of his associates and is suffering in prison like a criminal for preaching the Gospel- and Timothy is suffering in the church in Ephesus because of the opposition and criticism toward his own ministry. Paul had commissioned Timothy to care for the church in Ephesus, which he himself had founded and established, and he knew well the strengths and weaknesses of that church and he knew the pressures of the opposition that Timothy was under. 
He encourages Timothy and identifies with him, saying ‘God has not given ‘US’ a spirit of fear’. And in saying ‘US’ he is talking not only about himself but to all of us who also embrace the truth of the Gospel of ‘Christ in us and us in him’ – the Gospel that Paul preached everywhere he went. (Colossians 1:2, Ephesians 3:6-17). 

That message of the simplicity of Christ was being opposed then, and is still being opposed today. That Gospel of Christ was the foundation of our society’s tradition and formed its moral and ethical and relational integrity. Over recent generations our western society gradually became indifferent to the Gospel message and in recent times it has become quite hostile. Paul’s counsel to Timothy was not to fear, but to be strong and to trust in the faithfulness of God towards him and in the power of God within him. God is saying the same to us today.
In the next verse (verse 8) Paul tells Timothy not to be ashamed of that Gospel, nor of his association with Paul because he was suffering in prison for the Gospel – the power of salvation for all who believe. In this same passage of Scripture he writes.
‘which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.’ (2Timothy 1:12)

We are living in times when things have come to a deadlock in many spheres of our global society - in politics, in finances, in education, in relational integrity, in emotional well-being and in the spiritual influence of the Church. There is a power struggle in the heavens and God is moving forward and overcoming darkness, and many of God’s people are moving forward with him in their own lives, but we have yet to see this being manifested in the earth. As God said to Moses and to Israel at the crossing of the Red Sea ‘Stand still and see the salvation of your God’. Israel’s faith then actively moved them forward – by faith they crossed on dry land (Hebrews 11:29) - It is the same with us in these days when we embrace the moving of the Spirit of God within us – we move forward from a place of stillness.

The church in Ephesus had been beset with power struggles because of false teachers that had infiltrated the church and confused the people, and Paul had written to the church in Ephesus warning them of this (Ephesians 4:13). And in this letter to Timothy he warns him of the same thing and tells him to speak against it. He says to him, ‘Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but will want to hear according to their own desires, and because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables (fictional faith fantasies - 2Timothy 4:2).  

Paul had looked after the church in Ephesus for three years (Acts 20) during which time there were many signs and wonders done by him. There were also many false signs and wonders done by sorcerers and other false teachers but Paul’s teaching prevailed.  
Acts 19:16 ‘many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them, and it totalled fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. 

Finally, when he was about to leave the church, he called for the elders of the church. And when they had come to him, he encouraged them and he warned them, saying ‘For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore, watch and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears. So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace’ (Acts 20:29)
In the light of all this, Paul writes to Timothy in Ephesus.

THE SPIRIT OF POWER
Paul tells him that God has not given him a spirit of fear but had given him a Spirit of power and of love and of an ordered mind. The power of the world that was coming from some people in Ephesus was human power ‘over’ people, but the power of God through Timothy was Holy Spirit power ‘for’ people. Jesus said to his disciples ‘you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you’. Receiving the Holy Spirit is an attitude of faith in the working of God toward us an in us and through us.
Paul taught Timothy and he teaches us that we won’t know power unless we are extending God’s love - The Kingdom power that always extends itself out from God within us (2Corinthians 5:14 - For the love of Christ controls us). 
That power is the ability to change something from a lower state of physical or emotional energy to a higher state of Heavenly spiritual energy, where sin is transformed into holiness, anxiety into peace, sorrow to into joy, and fear into love.

THE SPIRIT OF LOVE
It is by experiencing the love of God to us that we can feel empowered. It changes us dramatically, surrendered to his will, as we receive God’s love with trust and thanks to him in whatever situation we find ourselves. We then observe how God dramatically changes the world around us as we come from a place of being united with God’s mind and heart of love and mercy, rather than acting from a place of judgement and vengeance. The Scripture describes this place of faith like this - children of God without fault in a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine as lights in the world as you hold forth the Word of life. (Philippian 2:15). 
Here are some extracts from Lamentations 3:17-58 where Jeremiah the suffering prophet laments about giving Gods word to Israel and almost giving up as he thought it was going nowhere - but then he remembered Gods loyal love.

I've forgotten what the good life is like. I said to myself, "This is it. I'm finished. God is a lost cause." I'll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness, the taste of ashes, the poison I've swallowed. I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—the feeling of hitting the bottom. 

But there's one other thing I remember, and remembering, I keep a grip on hope: God's loyal love couldn't have run out, his merciful love couldn't have dried up. They're created new every morning. How great is your faithfulness! I'm sticking with God (I say it over and over). He's all I've got left.

God proves to be good to the one who passionately waits, to the one who diligently seeks. It's a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God. It's a good thing to stick it out through the hard times. When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don't ask questions: Wait for hope to appear. Don't run from trouble. Take it full-face. The "worst" is never the worst.

Why? Because the Master won't ever walk out and fail to return. If he works severely, he also works tenderly. His stockpiles of loyal love are immense. He takes no pleasure in making life hard, in throwing roadblocks in the way: Lord, you came close when I called out. You said, 'It's going to be all right.' you brought me back alive! God, you saw the wrongs heaped on me.’ You took my side, Master.

THE SPIRIT OF AN ORDERED MIND
Paul teaches us that the mind is the battleground of darkness where Satan causes people’s thinking to get entangled with anxious emotional reactions and wrong perceptions. Then they get stuck and are unable to move forward because a disordered mind with reactive perceptions of situations obstructs heaven’s power. But Paul had taught Timothy the truth of the Holy Spirit being at work in our lives to change us by reordering the spirit of our minds. 

2Corinthians 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of human power but have divine power to destroy strongholds, casting down imaginations (wrong perceptions).

By acknowledging habits of emotional reactivity and surrendering the reactive perceptions of our imagination to God we destroy strongholds in the mind of wrong pathways of thought, and we rise up into the new life of an ordered mind - into a new pathway of freedom. We build that highway of the mind of Christ in our own minds and release the power of love from our hearts of faith – and that saves and heals the souls in the lives of the people in our world. Amen.  

 

 

 

 

 

Rise and Fall

RISE AND FALL
Luke 2:34 This one is assigned for the fall and rise of many – Simeon the prophet…
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated.  This time for dedication and purification was forty days after the birth of a child according to Jewish Law. 
A man named Simeon was also in the Temple at the time and The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen Jesus, God's anointed King. Holy Spirit had prompted him to go to the Temple that day to answer Simeon’s lifelong prayer of faithfully waiting and expecting the Messiah to come soon. And so when Mary and Joseph arrived to present the baby Jesus to the Lord in obedience to the law, Simeon realised that his prayer had been answered, and he greeted them. He took the child in his arms and began praising God.
‘Lord’ he said, I have seen him as you promised me I would. I have seen the Saviour you have given to the world. He is the Light that will shine upon the nations, and he will be the glory of your people Israel! now I can die in peace. (Luke 2:29)
Joseph and Mary just stood there, marvelling at what was being said about Jesus.

Meanwhile, a group of highly esteemed Wise Men called Magi set out from Babylon in the East. Babylon was the first civilization in the East to study and interpret the movement of the stars and planets as far back as 700 BC. Planets in those times were also referred to as stars and sometimes as wandering stars. There were many such Magi, astrologers and astronomers who served the kings of Babylon. These men also knew the writings of the Jewish scrolls and would have had knowledge of the prophesies concerning the Messiah and the predicted whereabouts of his birth. This was because of the influence of the Jewish religion during the seventy years internment of Israel in Babylon, where there was a cross assimilation of both cultures, and the impact of such an inspirational prophetic hero as Daniel. 
These Wise Men would have also studied any unusual or momentous activity of a night star in the heavens, as this was often interpreted by astrologers to be the sign of the birth of a great ruler. By observing the charts of the heavens and calculating the timing of a convergence of two great planets shining as a bright star they would have tracked that ‘great light’ that shone at the birth of Jesus. 

They followed this great light to the region of the special birth and arrived at Jerusalem and asked people about the birth of the new king of Israel and his whereabouts, but their presence in the city and the questions they were asking the local people came to the ears of the local ruler, Herod. Herod was a local tribal king who acted as an intermediary to Caesar, and he worked with the proconsuls and the military leadership in the region around Jerusalem. He had become agitated and threatened by the news of this supposed special child whose birth had been predicted, and he had heard that Israel had a record in their Scriptures of such an event heralding the birth of a Messiah or a new king to rule over them. It was rumoured that this special child would begin a new kingdom in the earth. He did not quite know what this meant, but he didn’t want that sort of competition because he had his own dynasty to create.

He urgently called for the Jewish priests and leaders and pressed them concerning the predicted time and place of this special birth. Certain scribes and teachers knew from the words of the prophet Micah in the Scriptures about the region of the child’s birth in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), and that a great star would appear at that time. Armed with this knowledge Herod secretly summonsed the Wise Men to his palace and told them the whereabouts of the region where they might find news of the child. He asked them to come back and inform him of the child’s exact location, telling them that he too wanted to worship this new king, but all he wanted to know was where to send his garrison of soldiers so that the child could be killed.

After their meeting with Herod the Wise Men followed the star which remained bright in the sky and they were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying. When the men were invited to see the child, they went down on their knees and worshipped him and presented him with special and peculiar gifts which have a spiritual message for us today about the life that Jesus lived for us and gave for us in his time on the earth.
There was the gift of gold, which speaks to us of the nature of God on display in the life of Jesus that would also be at work in those who believe in his life living within them.
There was frankincense which speaks to us of sweet prayer ascending from our hearts. 
There was myrrh which speaks to us of the suffering of Jesus, and how we share in that suffering in our lives, knowing that without that there is no spiritual growth.

That same night Gabriel gave a message to the Wise Men in a dream warning them not to report back to Herod, so the men departed and returned to their homeland another way. After their departure the Angel also appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt, and to stay there until he brought further word. He warned him that Herod was seeking the young child to destroy him, so Joseph took Mary and the young child and departed for Egypt that night. 

Herod died soon after this, and Gabriel spoke to Joseph in another dream that it was now safe to leave Egypt, fulfilling another prophecy which was spoken through the prophet Hosea; ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son’ (Hosea 11:1). 
Joseph then learned that the son of Herod, who now ruled in his father’s place, was as treacherous and murderous as his father, and he was afraid to go back to the area, but Gabriel appeared to Joseph again in a dream and told him to go to a quiet lakeside village in Galilee where they would be safe, so they came and settled in a city called Nazareth. And yet another prophesy was fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ (Matthew 2:23). They settled there as a family for many years, where Jesus grew from a child into an adult. 
The Bible tells us of the growth of the life of Jesus into wisdom and maturity and grace.
Luke 2:51 Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them, but His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.
These three qualities and characteristics of the life of Jesus marked the way of life that shaped his pathway forward in life. They are imparted to us as virtues to be honoured and believed in and taken up, by our faith in his life, that dwells within us.
Wisdom is not just knowledge, but it is the way that harmonises knowledge and good intention to serve the highest good for the most people. 
Stature is the nobility of character that is formed by consistent acts of wisdom.
Favour is the acceptance and approval that comes forth to meet the one of wisdom and stature and give them passage or right of way. It is the gift of grace.

There was a further prophecy that Simeon spoke over Jesus at the time of his circumcision in the temple, that we spoke about at the beginning.
‘This one is assigned for the fall and rise of many in Israel and as a sign that will be opposed and denied by multitudes in all the earth, so that the thoughts of their hearts might be revealed. 
This prophecy declares Jesus as being the one whose life is a sign and a symbol of the way of life and truth for each one of us to follow. This way of life will reveal the thoughts and intentions of each of our hearts as being those that either receive and follow that way of life or they that oppose and reject it. 
For the one whose heart receives and follows in the ways of wisdom and stature and favour (grace) – their life will rise into unity with God. 
For the one whose heart opposes and denies those ways - their life falls into alienation from the life of God. (Ephesians 4:17)
Our past is usually a mixture of rises and falls - but God wants us to be people that rise up into his likeness instead of falling into a downward spiral of wrong behaviour or bad habits – the non-virtue that damages our soul. There is a way of faith that can get us from the downward spiral of non-virtue into the upward rise of virtue.

As far as our brain is concerned there is actually a neurological process that allows the formation of a bad habit – a non-virtue, to grow a life of its own. Repeating the wrong behaviour habitually forms a neural pathway that forms a tiny cellular arrangement of cells that seats itself at a junction deep down in the brain. Over time that place becomes a ‘go to’ place where that experience and sensation automatically fires up dopamine motivation and reward processes which starts a harmful behaviour spiral down to hitting rock bottom, with the consequences of causing harm to ourselves and/or others. 
Ephesians 4:22 put off your old self, which belongs to your former bad behaviour (anastrophe- drawing you down) and is corrupt through deceitful desires (delusional longings), and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true virtue and holiness.
But when we make the promises to ourselves to cease that harmful behaviour and its consequences, we find that the pathways are formed, and the habit space has become a spiritual stronghold waiting at the junction. It waits to hijack anything that wants to take our new anti-bad habit idea to the frontal lobes of our brain where our brain is created to make wise decisions. But that bad habit space is there to stay, and that is where we need faith. The Holy Spirit helps us to be aware of that behaviour and to bring it to the Lord for his grace to overcome it. The work of our faith is to create a more fulfilling virtue space, created in the likeness of Jesus, and it is at this point where we draw from the life of Jesus within us by our faith. We put off the old and get renewed in the spirit of our mind and put on the new which is created in true holiness in the image of God.  We can get used to running down the bunny trails of bad habits but God says 'no’ I'm going to let you have a highway of holiness and I'm going to be with you as you create that - and as you come to me new pathways will be formed.

Through what Jesus accomplished in his short journey in the earth, the bond of oneness (peace) which he experienced with his Heavenly Father – He was building a highway which would become available to all of us, to grow and mature together as sons and daughters in his family, in wisdom and stature and favour (grace) with God and man. 
Through the birth of this child divine life had been embedded into human life – His life sacrificed - then risen to life again - then sent into humanity through the Holy Spirit. This had never happened before, this new form of life - God and man together - a new creation. And because of this new creation a new flow of life between man and God can occur, whereby God transforms us and gives us grace for our hearts to be subdued into desiring his will above our own. 
The Scriptures speak forcefully of this transforming power.
Philippians 1:6 Be confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
Philippians 2:13 For it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good will.
Philippians 3:21 He will transform our lesser body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.
By coming before The lord in quietness and confidence with a faith filled heart and being present with him, his grace acts upon us by the Holy Spirit to transform us into his likeness - body, soul and spirit. In the body by those new pathways being formed in the neurophysiology in our brain, in the soul because our surrendered will is subdued by his will, and in the spirit because we are one spirit with him – We rise above the values of this world into those of his Kingdom above. Amen.

 

King of Peace

KING OF PEACE

In the days after the birth of John the Baptist, Caesar Augustus, who was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, decided to do a census and register every person in the known world. Caesar Augustus was the emperor who established the Pax Romanus, the Peace of Rome, a two-hundred-year era of worldly political peace under the rulership of Rome, which allowed the gospel to spread into the whole world, as the empire of Rome comprised over twenty percent of the population of the known world at that time. Everyone had to go to their place of birth to be registered, so Joseph had to take Mary back to Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David. The Scriptures had prophesied that the true King of Peace would be born in Bethlehem at that very time, in a small village nearly five thousand miles distance from the palace of Caesar Augustus in Rome.

Micah 5:2. But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me One who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore, he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour has given birth to a Son; then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel.
And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And he shall be our peace. 
Joseph and Mary were sent to the right place at the right time for the birth of Jesus, fulfilling the seven-hundred-year-old prophesy of his birthplace, and becoming the King of Peace.

Joseph walked beside the donkey that carried his wife. He was getting weary, and the journey was tiresome for Mary, and he knew he had to get his wife to the place of his family’s household and out of the cold, and the time was getting close for her to give birth. They finally arrived at the family home where they were warmly welcomed and invited inside. The dwelling complex was the usual cluster of rooms surrounding a central courtyard and it became clear to Joseph that the house was overcrowded, and that all the guestrooms were occupied. The word for guestroom in the Bible is kataluma, and this is the word for ‘Inn’, as in Luke 22:11 which states in the narrative that ‘There was no room at the Inn’. So we are not talking about two travellers trying to book into a local tavern that had already filled its quota in such a busy season. They did not have to go and look for a stable in some paddock up the road. What the story is saying is that Joseph and his wife would have to stay in the stable of the family home, downstairs, in that warm place near where the animals slept and fed. 
He saw the signs of the oncoming birth in the drawn face and the discomfort in Mary’s eyes and he settled her as quickly and gently as he could.  A mother sweated through her mother pain and a baby cried its baby cry of shock as it entered the world. The smile upon Father’s face in heaven became a laugh of joy, which was echoed by Joseph in the earth, who would now adopt the role of the child’s earthly father. Loving mother hands washed the newborn child in a water trough. 
On earth it was the natural and familiar scene of new birth. In the universe it was the most supernatural of any birth in history. It was also ordained that this birth would become the most celebrated event for all time, celebrated annually by millions upon billions down through the ages, many of whom had no idea why or what they were really celebrating.

Nearby, where shepherds were looking after their sheep upon the hills a huge shining star having reached its zenith was lighting up the entire night sky. The shepherds looked up in wonder at this light and suddenly the lights of shining angels dazzled them and they became terrified and ran and huddled together. The Angel Gabriel appeared above them, sent to tell them of the birth of Jesus. He told them not to be afraid, and that he had great and marvellous news for them, for all the world to hear. He told them that they would find a child, the newborn king of the universe, God the Saviour, wrapped in simple clothing in a nearby stable. Suddenly Gabriel was joined by a multitude of angels as the brilliant night sky resounded with their voices singing, and they listened enraptured at the magnificent words. “The glory of God is being seen in the heavens, and his love and goodness is creating a new era of peace for all mankind.” Their singing of this new creation was the magnificent sequel to their song of the first creation – ‘When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy’ (Job 38:4,7,8).
When the singing had stopped, and the angels had left they were guided to the place where this extraordinary and singular event was taking place in the earth. These simple shepherds became the emissaries to the world of the birth of this king of kings, this child, and all who heard them were astounded and amazed.

A great light shone that night. The light shone upon a newborn child who would bring light into this world, to every person born into this world (John 1:9). And this light would be contested by darkness as always, but the conflict now rose to a new height. Time waited for the outcome, the verdict, the final encounter between light and darkness on a cross one dark and stormy day. Time would wait until Father was ready, then this light would be able to overcome darkness in every single life.

God with us means more than just alongside us. It means he is within and through our being, and more than that, we are within and through his being. This is how we get to ‘know God’. Holy Spirit speaks into our spirit the mind and words of Jesus, and we ‘see and know’ Jesus in this way. Faith lets us speak to him as a person, person to person. 
1John 2:27 But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true.
This does not mean we disregard Scriptural teaching. This Scripture simply makes alive and real the personal and individual whisper of God into our spirit as the wisdom and understanding of the mind and heart of God, that we need in any given situation and at any given time. That becomes the light to our path allowing us to express our unique and truest self in the best possible way. That is our faith.
Christmas waits to be truly celebrated. Without Christmas there is no way we could ever have known God and become one with him.

 

Messenger and Message

MESSENGER AND MESSAGE

Even before the fall of Adam and Eve Father God had always planned that a new species was to be born into the earth one day. He had planned for his Son to begin this new species, a Spirit species – God and man. God would set up a Divine force-field where immortality joined mortality for all of humanity for all time. Now was the time for Jesus to go to earth as The Father’s Son, to become the pain of what human life had become, and to walk the path of its lost hope, and its sorrow, and to lift human life into a place of oneness with ‘The Three in One’. Jesus as the Son of the Father knew before the beginning of time that this was to be. He knew that it was the only way for the love of God to be known by humanity. Jesus knew that he would become the expression of that love in the most perfect way.

Age upon age had passed in what we call time, and finally the appointed time came to heal the earth. It was broken and bleeding, twisted and torn, and it could not help itself. Lucifer had planted suspicion and hostility into mankind’s mind about God, and humanity had become comfortable with keeping God at a distance, with people believing that perhaps God was watching them, and waiting to judge them. This is the sad state that religion can come to, people trying to appease and manipulate what they see as a distant God who is out to punish them. God was about to give humanity the perfect answer, not a religion, but Himself. Jesus, as God and as man was to make his transition from eternity into time, from heaven to earth, from pure Spirit existence to human flesh existence.

Holy Spirit was to become a partner with Jesus in the completion of this glorious plan. It was not just Jesus God who would inhabit the earth, but Holy Spirit would also become a person of this planet by sharing every moment of life with Jesus, and in that way, he too would experience human life. After Jesus had finished his mission on earth Holy Spirit would become the expression of God’s love to all of humanity. For the rest of time, he was to wrestle within the pain and confusion of human life to reveal God’s love to people and to bring them into oneness with The Three in One.
Father would send a divine seed of life from heaven, and he had chosen a young woman called Mary to receive that seed, which was to contain the full genetic potency of their love and goodness and truth. He sent an angel to announce this amazing news to Mary.
Gabriel entered the place where Mary lived, and startled and afraid she stared at the heavenly being. Gabriel told Mary that she had been chosen amongst all women on the earth to give birth to a child who was to be 'God the Son' and that she was to call him Jesus. She answered back that it was impossible and that she never been with a man. Gabriel told her that the birth of this Child would not have anything to do with Joseph, her betrothed, and that The Holy Spirit would shine his life over her and divine life from heaven would come alive in her womb, even though she was a virgin. He told her that this was the will of Father God, and of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit, for her to be the mother of this special child who would be the liberator of all mankind. Mary humbly surrendered her entire being to the magnificent will of God. Mary’s response to God through the Angel was ‘let it be done unto to me according to your word’ (Luke 1:38).

When Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they were married, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph was a caring and just man and did not want to put her to shame, so he decided to divorce her quietly. But as he was considering how to go about these things the angel Gabriel appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins”(Matthew 1:21) All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet Isaiah: A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son, and his name will mean ‘God with us’.
When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he married Mary but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

Soon after the angel’s visit Mary then made a two-hundred-kilometre journey to be with her cousin Elizabeth in Hebron. Elizabeth was an elderly woman and she and her husband, Zacharias, had never been able to have children, but now Elizabeth is pregnant as God had worked a miracle so they could conceive. Their child would grow up to be John the Baptist, the person whose role in life was to prepare the world for Jesus, and tradition holds that Jesus was born about six months after John.
The Christmas story of the miracle birth of Jesus includes the story of the miracle birth of his cousin, John the Baptist, whose father, Zacharias was a priest of the High Priestly line of Aaron, so John was of the same priestly line being the firstborn son of a priest (and a prophet). 
The angel Gabriel had earlier been sent by God to Zacharias while he was ministering to the Lord before the people in the temple, and burning incense upon the altar. Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him, but the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” (Luke 1:13)
And Zecharias said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” The angel said “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”

When Mary finally arrived at the home of Elizabeth, she was warmly greeted by her, and Elizabeth’s child leaped within her, and she was filled with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, “Blessed are You by God above all other women and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” (Luke 1:42-45). Mary then praised the Lord in prayer. 
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked on the lowly worth of his servant, and behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of lowly worth (Luke 1:46). Mary remained with Elizaberth about three months and returned to her home.

When Elizabeth’s baby boy was born the word spread quickly to her neighbours and relatives, and everyone rejoiced, and when the baby was eight days old they all came for the circumcision ceremony. They all assumed the baby’s name would be Zacharias, after his father, but Elizabeth said that he must be named John, and everyone was surprised because no one in the family was called by that name. So, they asked Zacharias, talking to him by gestures because he had been struck dumb by the angel Gabriel. 

Unbelief had taken away the voice of God from the temple priest, Zacharias until John came into the world. That time of silence is a prophetic summary of the voiceless time that God’s people were experiencing in that day. They were in a time and place of silence and darkness, having been without a prophetic voice for four hundred years, and the world shared that silence. That silence would soon be over.
In these days in which we live, God’s people, and the world, are in a similar situation of uncertainty and disruption. We are living in a time when there is great darkness and disorder in the world. There are many opinions and many noisy words of judgement and contention being spoken in the secular world while a stark scarceness of wisdom and leadership exists at many levels. Many in the Church also prayerfully wait for the silence to be over, to hear a clear voice from God to the Church, so that there can be a clear Word from the Church to the world. 
Within that faithful waiting in many hearts there is also a stirring that the Holy Spirit is doing a work of preparing a people of faith who will awaken others to turn their hearts to the Lord their God. Just as the angel said to Zacharias ‘And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.’ (Luke 1:17) 

Zacharias motioned for a piece of paper and to everyone’s surprise wrote that the boy’s name was to be John, and instantly he could speak again, and he began praising God. The silence was over.
Then Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit and gave this prophecy to his son John:
“And you, my little son, shall be called the prophet of the glorious God, for you will prepare the way for the Messiah. You will tell his people how to find salvation through forgiveness of their sins. All this will be because of the tender mercy of our God`, and heaven’s dawn is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow, and to guide us to the path of peace.”
When the silence ceased it did not mean that loud voices would be heard, but a clear voice and so will it be for us in these days ahead. The dove of the Holy Spirit will not clamour but will bring a clarity concerning the love of God for us all. The clear voice will not only come from dedicated church leaders but in some ways even more so, it will come from the soft and faithful hearts of God’s people who love God and one another. They will speak words of love and care and they will release acts of kindness into their world around them. This will allow that light to dawn upon a dark world that can be guided into a path of peace.

 

Food that you don’t know about

FOOD THAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT

Jesus had been sitting beside a well talking to a very preoccupied, unhappy and unfulfilled Samaritan woman about giving her the living water of the Holy Spirit, and the words he spoke to her changed her life forever. His disciples had become hungry and had gone into the township to get something for them all to eat. They returned with some food for Jesus and offered it to him.
John 4:31. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 
Jesus didn’t say ‘My duty is to do the will of him who sent me’. He said that doing the will of the Father was the energy that sustained and strengthened him. 
Jesus carried enormous burdens of responsibility to do his Father’s loving will for other people. He also had to absorb the discouraging activity of other peoples’ negative attitudes and resistance towards him and his teaching, and he needed more than just willpower to give him the energy to fulfill these demands.

How strange that the doing of his Father’s will was what both took his energy and what gave him energy. It had to belong to a different energy system that we usually operate from. He said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” Jesus knew full well about that food, and he lived within the energy that it gave him. It was spiritual food. It was supernatural food. It came from the heart of the Father. It was the Father’s love for him.

The way it worked was that Jesus felt energized and supported by the same energy that created the Universe. That energy never runs out. It is a loop system that feeds itself because it is eternal, not natural, even though, to Jesus it would have seemed natural, because of the perfect love that existed between himself and the Father and the Holy Spirit. This was the ‘Christ energy food’ that humanity had never known before Jesus arrived on the earth. This was the energy food of God’s love that allowed Jesus to bear the burdens of a suffering humanity.

Paul knew this source of ‘Christ energy’ to serve others and he writes to us about it.
Galatians 6:2 Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Paul tells us that this is what compelled and motivated his own faithful service in the Lord to the people he was sent to serve, and that includes ourselves who read and receive his inspired Word of Scripture to us.
2Corinthians 5:14 For the love of Christ compels us, because we now see things this way: that if One died for all, then all have died; and He died for all, that those who now live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
We need the provision of this spiritual food that nourishes our hearts and souls, as we share in the supernatural work of the doing of God’s good will to others. The powerful energy of God’s love through us to others feeds and strengthens our souls and even our bodies as well. This powerful energy of God’s love lifts the burdens of suffering and shame and guilt from other people in our world of relationship and involvement however large or small that world is. 
This is not like normal food or fast food – It is everlasting food. 

Jesus had been talking to the Jews who were crowding around him and his disciples, listening to him teach. He said to them
John 6:27 ‘Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you’ 
Some in the crowd argued that Moses gave their forefathers manna, the bread from Heaven they ate in the wilderness. Jesus then said to them Moses did not give the bread from Heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Jesus crowned this by saying If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my body (my flesh - sarx), which I shall give for the life of the world (vs.51).
His message was that the manna from Heaven that their forefathers ate didn’t last, but if they partook of him spiritually as their bread of life, they would experience everlasting life. Then later in this conversation Jesus finished by saying ‘The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort (the flesh) accomplishes nothing. And the words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life’ (vs.63).

We can receive that ‘Christ energy food’ of God’s love that energises us to bear not only the burdens that we have to carry for ourselves, but also the burdens that we carry for others, in the same way that Jesus received and lived in the everlasting love of the Father.
Jesus plainly tells us that The Spirit alone gives everlasting life. Human effort accomplishes nothing, so, doing the will of the Father in completing his work of loving service to others is not an effort of the human will alone.

But when we desire to do the will of the Father, we have to engage our will somewhere and to choose to faithfully do his will as best we can. We become faithful in putting natural things in order then he gives us authority in bringing spiritual things into order – his Kingdom order. We go from faith to faith in a faith that is working by love. It is God’s will we are seeking, and it is God’s love that we are seeking to reveal, no matter how incompletely we yet see this being accomplished.
The secret of Jesus was that he lived fully in the love of the Father. Jesus completed the Father’s love to him first, by his loving gratitude for that love, then he revealed the Father’s love to those he faithfully served that were around him in his world of relationship and involvement
‘Love the lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength - and then your neighbour as yourself’.

The Holy Spirit wants to help us to live in that same love that the Father had for Jesus and also has for us. Through the grace of Jesus, we can first purposefully respond to the Father’s love for us in an act of worshipful thanksgiving. We come into his presence and receive his love, and in quietness and confidence we find our strength in that bread of his loving presence. We come to partake of a food that we did not know, the bread of life. Jesus is the gift of love to us from the Father.

We can arrange that communion with the Father purposely but doing the good will of God for others is something we may not always be able to arrange (other than in prayer – and that becomes the most powerful way of praying – by releasing the Father’s love and goodwill to all those in our world of relationship and involvement.).
The opportunity of bearing the burdens of others often tends to land on your doorstep unexpected. How many interruptions did you encounter last week that may have actually been opportunities to eat the bread of life and be nourished and strengthened, but we so often don’t see it at the time. Jesus can often seem like an interruption to our day, but He comes disguised as our everyday up and down life, waiting for us to respond to His heart of goodwill for other people. 

Jesus was ready to give words of life to that unhappy and unfulfilled woman by the well and see her life transformed. He was always ready because he had a food that his disciples did not know about. That food is ready for us to live on. It is the energy ready for us to live in. It is the constant unchanging energy of his love towards us that created all things, and that reorders all things according to his will, which he invites us to complete for him and with him wherever we are and wherever we go. His love is there as the reason that you are there.

 

 

Bad News and Good News

BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS 
The world is mostly preoccupied with bad news more than good news in its media expression and general conversation. That is why we have been given a Gospel of good news and it would be unwise to allow the preaching emphasis of that Gospel to be more on the bad news than on the good news. Paul writes to the Corinthian church about this in his letter concerning the ministry of death and the ministry of life.

2Corinthians 3:6 God has equipped us to be ministers of the New Covenant; not of the letter, but of the Spirit: for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life. The ministry of the law written on stone that brought condemnation and death and separation from God, came with a short-lived glory (reflecting the nature of God’s righteousness and wisdom).
The face of Moses shone, and Israel veiled their eyes and turned away… 
Will not the ministry of the Spirit have a much greater glory? So we can put our hope in this and speak clearly and confidently. For if the temporary order of things (the Law), had its glory much more will the eternal order have its glory (the Holy Spirit putting God on display in our lives). 
for even today when Israel reads the Old Covenant Law the same veil of turning away remains; But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there the heart is free. So we, with an unveiled face reflecting the glory of the Lord as a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory through the Spirit of the Lord.

The teaching of the law and Commandments had a measure of glory because it put the nature of God on display (in his righteousness and wisdom). It still does this, and if people do their best in their own strength to obey the Commandments, they will live a more ordered and godly life, but it will not be the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. When I did the podcast series on the Ten Commandments, I explained at the beginning of each session that the way I was presenting the teaching was to emphasise the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the New Covenant application of each Commandment, and that this transformation of our lives was not just from bad to good but from natural to spiritual.

The teaching of the Law was for the purpose of showing people what sin was - sin towards God and sin towards one another (Galatians 3:19) and all the sins outlined in the Ten Commandments were sins against relationships. The first four were about not trusting God and not loving him and the last six were about not loving one another.
The Bible says that loving God and one another is the fulfilment of the Commandments (Romans 13:10).

I grew up as a Catholic and was taught the Ten Commandments and all about sin and punishment and about obedience to the church commandments also, with obligations of attending church, receiving communion, going to confession, and doing penance for sins, and fasting and giving, and other sacramental rites. This helped to form my conscience and to cultivate a tender heart towards God, but I always felt guilt and shame and wondered how I would become a better person. I felt loved and secure and did my best about some of the legalistic bad news – until at about nineteen years of age I took a break from it all and went my own way. Some years after that I married a committed Protestant girl and began to search anew for God, and we had many discussions over Christian doctrine. Some time later she bought me a Bible and by the grace of God while reading that Bible in the middle of the night I found Jesus and then I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Everything began to change and so did I. And I had a clear understanding of the difference between the works of faith and the dead works of doing religion in our own strength. I also realised that the works of faith and of dead works was everywhere, in every church of every denomination, and that the Bible had a lot to say about it. I still respect the Catholic Church and every other church that teaches the forgiveness of sins through Jesus and the love of the Father and the grace of the Holy Spirit. I pray that we will all receive even greater revelation of all these truths.

I find that the hardest thing to grapple with is the teaching of a God that is ‘more angry than loving’. There is a teaching that proclaims that Jesus died for our sins to appease an angry God who was angry with all of us because of our sins and that his anger had to be taken out on Jesus who faithfully took that anger and punishment for us and so changed the Father’s heart towards us. This is called the doctrine of penal substitution (penalty substitution).

No, I believe that the Father so loved the world that he sent his Son to die for us, not to change the Heart of the Father but to change the heart of humanity, by giving them a new heart and a new spirit through the New Covenant and the Holy Spirit. 
In fact, if Jesus died on the cross to change the heart of an angry God, then it didn’t work, because God is still angry. He is still angry about the destruction that sin does to the human soul of his beloved humanity that he made in his image, and he is still angry at Satan for his dark heart of malice that holds sway over the human heart.  

That anger is called the wrath of God (orge – intense feeling of indignation) which didn’t disappear when Jesus died for our sins on the cross. It is the loving unyielding defence he expresses for his human family in correcting the harmful acts of unlove (sin) that we commit towards one another. This act of his intense love is nested in justice and truth as well as in mercy and forgiveness. (Romans 1:18)  
Today God is allowing many areas of injustice and the suppression of truth to be uncovered (apocolypto) and to come under his hand of his discipline in a world of abounding suspicion and blame and resentment. God counters all of that negative activity with a Gospel of hope and an abundance of grace where God is always within reach and peace can flourish in our inner lives. 

God hates the bad news of what sin does to people so he has good news about what forgiveness and reconciliation does for people. That is why there has to be a Gospel of good news for those who do harm and for the poor people who get harmed. The good news is that there is forgiveness, and the further good news is that there is the gift of the life of Jesus within. He gives us a new spirit - he gives us his Spirit and he gives us a new heart.

People need to be told they are forgiven, and that they need no longer be separated from God because of the feelings of guilt and shame about their sinful behaviour, which makes them hide from God and cover up in front of each other. They can receive a new mindset – metanoia – which means repentance. The new mindset acknowledges that God is not at odds with them, and they no longer need to be at odds with him. They are reconciled and can acknowledge with relief their sinful nature and be forgiven and transformed. They cannot have everything that they want, but they can receive every good thing that God wants for them. They are now able to have God’s peace. They are now able to trust God. They can now know what it means to be saved. And they also need to know that God holds us to account to not neglect such a great salvation (the healing of the soul).

Jonathan Edwards was a profoundly spiritual man of puritan and reformed theology who preached powerfully and sincerely about the death and resurrection of Jesus as our saviour from sin. In 1733 -1735 there was revival in his church in Northampton Massachusetts USA where there were 30 people being saved each week and it is reported that in six months, nearly 300 of 1100 youths in Northampton were admitted to the church. It was credited as being the beginning of a spiritual awakening that led to becoming the Great Awakening under George Whitefield in 1740. His influence of puritanism and Calvinism shaped the character of American Protestantism for many years, and it still has sway in its expression in modern evangelicalism. 

The following is an excerpt of Jonathan Edward’s preaching from ‘Sinners in the hands of an Angry God’.

‘The bow of Gods wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all that keeps the arrow for one moment from being made drunk with your blood.’
And why should God be obliged to express such wonderful love to you, who never exercised the least degree of love to him in all your life? You never have loved God, who is infinitely glorious and lovely; and why then is God under obligation to love you, who are all over deformed and loathsome as a filthy worm, or rather a hateful viper? You have no benevolence in your heart towards God; you never rejoiced in God's happiness; And why then should God be looked upon as obliged to take so much care for your happiness, as to do such great things for it, as he doth for those that are saved? You care not what becomes of God's glory; you are not distressed how much soever his honour seems to suffer in the world: and why should God care anymore for your welfare? Has it not been so, that if you could but promote your private interest, and gratify your own lusts, you cared not how much the glory of God suffered? And why may not God advance his own glory in the ruin of your welfare, not caring how much your interest suffers by it? And why then is it harsh that God doth not do such great things for you as the changing of your nature, raising you from spiritual death to life or conquering the powers of darkness for you…

The odd thing is that even if the Gospel is preached badly and tells more bad news than good news the Holy Spirit will honour the hearts of his children who call upon his name even out of guilt and shame and not out of the gratitude and joy of forgiveness, as long as the death and resurrection of Jesus as our saviour from sin is sincerely proclaimed. The work of the Gospel in the hearts of people is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit of grace. 

This narrative has affected the mind and heart of the Western Church as well as people in Western Society who have stopped going to church and don’t want to hear about God. What and who we are told we are by God, (or someone speaking in his name) is what we take upon ourselves and has a profound effect on our souls, and if we can’t face that narrative, we escape from its punishing thought somehow. Today’s Western World might refer to God with the idea of ‘God at a distance’ but it is a world proud of its individualism and independence and is convinced that we can work life out by ourselves without God. The sad consequence is a crowded humanity swimming in a high tide of isolation and loneliness and with a suffering soul. Christians often incorrectly manage their own guilt and shame by declaring judgment upon the world for all its wickedness. 

In contrast is the spiritual understanding of Athanasius who wrote circa 350 AD. Athanasius was an Egyptian Coptic Christian Theologian and a Church Father and was the chief defender of Trinitarianism against Arianism (Jesus was not God and there was no Trinity). 

‘It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by him should be brought to nothing by the deceit wrought upon man by the devil, and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As then the creatures whom He had created reasonable like the Word were in fact perishing and such noble works were on their way to ruin, what then was God, being good, to do? Was he to let corruption and death have their way with them – and in that case what would be the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than have been created to be neglected and perish. And besides that, such indifference to the ruin of his own work before his own eyes would argue not goodness in God, but limitation, and that far more than if he had never created man at all. It was impossible therefore that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption because it would be unfitting and unworthy of himself…’ He writes further,
Thus, taking a body like our own because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, he surrendered his body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This he did out of sheer love for us so that in his death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because having fulfilled in his body that for which he was appointed, death was thereafter voided of its power for men. This he did that he might turn men again to incorruption who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of his body and by the grace of his resurrection thus he would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

That is why God’s wrath passionately says ‘No’ to the plunging of mankind forever into a mindset of separation from God and stuck with a heart and conscience of guilt and shame. Only his Son Jesus could sinlessly plunge himself into all that sinful humanity and bend back the separated mindset of Adam with its independence and guilt and shame. And by dying sinless for us as sinful humanity and rising again for us as glorified humanity he could join our lives to his in oneness of Spirit where we can live a life of knowing we are loved by him and able to love him back and be transformed. That is not penal substitution (punishment substitution) based on the so-called justice of an angry God but is the way for us to find new life in oneness with God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

 

 

 

WAKEUP CALL

WAKEUP CALL

There are two parables describing marriage feasts in the gospel of Matthew and they are about the Kingdom of Heaven and of God’s relationship to his Church, and they both give us a picture of the end time return of Jesus to be joined to his bride.
In Matthew there is the parable of the King arranging a wedding for his son.
“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come (Matthew 22:2) Here the attention is upon the guests who were invited and their various reasons for not attending, which dishonoured the King, but there is nothing mentioned here about the bride or the bridesmaids. In this story the King finally sends his servants out into the highways and byways to compel people to come to the feast because he wants the celebration to be well attended. 

The parable of the wise and the foolish bridesmaids is in Matthew chapter 25 and is more focussed upon the bride and the bridegroom and the bridesmaids. The bridegroom is Jesus, and the bride is the church, and the attention is upon the readiness of those who have roles to perform in their attendance at the marriage feast, such as the bridesmaids. 

Today we will look mainly at the parable of wise and foolish bridesmaids, which starts off by saying. ‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps in order to go out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish (m??ros –neglectful, unmindful [moron]), and five were wise (phronemos – thoughtful, mindful). (Matthew 25:1)

The background to these parables is the Jewish marriage customs in Bible times, and they give us an insight into the order of certain arrangements such as who sends out the invitations and to whom are invitations sent and the question of who determines what the wedding date shall be. There are various obligations and expectations and if these are not observed properly then a person’s honour could be at stake
The usual arrangement was that both families would arrange for a young couple to become betrothed for about a year and then work together on the future plans and financial arrangements for all parties involved. When the marriage occurred around a year later the bridegroom and the bride would not organise their own future household arrangements as the bride would join the bridegroom’s family household after the marriage. After the initial betrothal the bridegroom would live in his father’s house, and he would prepare a bridal chamber like an add-on apartment for he and his bride to live in for some time into the future. 

There was some flexibility regarding the time for the bridegroom to prepare this new place for he and his bride so there was no definite wedding date and when the place was complete, the groom would come to get his bride and bring her home for the wedding and the wedding feast. The bride would not know the day or hour of her husband-to-be’s return, and the groom’s arrival was usually suddenly announced with a trumpet call and a shout, so the bride at least had some forewarning. The bride would take part in a ritual cleansing and then came the smaller family ceremony which was attended by a select few. Then after the family ceremony the couple would attend a more lavish wedding feast celebrated in their honour which included a much larger crowd. The servants of the bridegroom’s father were sent out to invite the guests to the larger wedding feast celebration.
This is why the parables concerning wedding feasts always involve some confusion over the guests often being caught having to put off other arrangements in order to honour the host of the wedding feast, and this was a test for the guests and their order of priorities and loyalties as they often had other matters of importance or self-interest to attend to. The uncertainty of the timing of the event all depended upon how long it took the bridegroom to prepare a place for his bride (no one knew the day or the hour) and the smoothness of the process of the wedding and the feast depended upon how ready everybody was when the bridegroom announced that he was ready. Some were extremely mindful of all these proceedings while others were unmindful or indifferent.
The main point of these stories is; who was mindful and who was unmindful during the delay.

Matthew 25:1 Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps in order to go out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish (m??ros – heedless, neglectful, unmindful), and five were wise (phronemos – thoughtful, mindful). For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready (hetoimos – prepared oil in lamps) went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ 
Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

We have said that these parables are about Jesus and the Church, so we must ask the question ‘Is everybody at the wedding feast part of ‘The Church’?
The answer is yes, this is clearly the case and that there are very many people who make up the Church that are at different levels of commitment to God. God knows where his Church is somewhere in amongst all those that ‘do Church’ because ‘doing church is not necessarily ‘being Church’. 
This prompts another question ‘If the Bible says that the bride of Christ is the Church, then what is the difference between the bride and the bridesmaids and the other guests, as aren’t they also the Church?
Again, the answer is yes, but there are people also at different levels of intimate relationship with Jesus, and the ‘bride company’ of the Church exists invisibly here and there as ones who would be in the most intimate of relationship with him. The Father is very accepting and merciful to all who believe in his Son and are on their journey of faith and all we can say is that by the grace of God people make their own choices in these relationship priorities. Only God knows the heart of each one and we cannot assume or presume in these matters about where everything is at right now and where they will be one day. 

However, we can observe that the Bible describes different categories of people involved in these wedding feast stories.
The two most important ones are the bride and the bridegroom, and they only have eyes and minds and feelings for one another, anticipating a life of being together as one forever.
This speaks of Jesus coming back for his bride which is part of the Church.

Then we have the bridegroom’s father who is concerned for the honour and fulfillment of his son’s life and future. This speaks of Father God

The bride’s parents are concerned that the bride will be prepared and ready and bring beauty and glory to this very special occasion. This speaks to us of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in preparing us to be his bride.

The interesting thing about the bridesmaids is that is that ‘they all became drowsy and slept because of the bridegroom’s delay’ – That is why I’m calling this word ‘Wakeup Call’. Some were more diligent than others in being ready by having oil in their lamps, which speaks to us of being filled with the Holy Spirit and awake and alive to his activity within. The unmindful bridesmaids had indeed experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives but had been distracted and had neglected the work of the Holy Spirit alive in them and run out of oil. 
In those times the bridesmaids were chosen knew that they too would without doubt be brides one day. That would be their sure hope and expectation. We could speculate that this progression from bridesmaid to bride is there for every one of us and even if it does not occur within our lifespan, we might consider that in the age to come the Holy Spirit will cause our love to be completed in the Father’s love for us so that we too will be as the bride in perfect oneness with his Son Jesus who will appear to us as the bridegroom 
1John 3:2 we are God's children now, and what we shall be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears (phanero??- to know what has been hidden or unknown, to manifest, whether by words, or deeds, or in any other way) we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself as he is pure.

As for the many other guests mentioned in the first parable the Bible reveals that this was a test for their order of priorities and loyalties in honouring the son’s father. And when we consider how the father’s heart was so determined to fill his house at all costs that he sent the servants to get people from the highways and byways, such as beggars maybe sleeping under bridges. 

This prompts another question for further speculation.
Could there be people that we know of who have not responded to the gospel for a multitude of reasons and whose hearts maybe have pondered the Mystery of God with doubt or improbability or even the denial of a wounded and painful heart, and whom the Father sees as his children who need more time in an age to come, for their heart response to his love to be completed just as do the bridesmaids? 
Only God knows. 
But to join the dots a little more boldly I will add this; The final thing God did when he created the world, on the sixth and final day of his creation was to fashion a bride Eve for his Son Adam. On the seventh day he rested in order to enjoy the fulness of fellowship with his sons and daughters to be.
And now for another question. If God’s final work in the final days of this present kingdom age will be to fashion a bride for his Son, what will be the nature of the next Kingdom age that the Scriptures speak about at length concerning a one-thousand-year reign of Christ upon the earth during which time Satan is bound? (Revelation 20:1-6, Timothy 2:11, Romans 16:20, Isaiah 2:2-4, Isaiah 11:6-9, Micah 4:1-3 and many more).

Could this be a time of opportunity for the completion of the love response in the hearts of multitudes of people that perfects their oneness with the bridegroom Jesus?
Today I will just have to leave these questions open for your consideration and address them further in the New Year, the Lord willing. Have your questions and comments ready.

In both parables a peculiar thing happens in that some of those invited to the marriage feast have the door closed on them at the last moment. The five unmindful bridesmaids were left outside, and in the other parable a man was put out into outer darkness for not having a wedding garment. There is no explanation given about this outer place in the parable but my speculation concerning this in the reading of other Scriptures in Revelation chapters 11, 12, and 19, is that this outer place could well be a time of trial and tribulation that some in the Church may experience while those at the feast are given safety and refuge in the presence of the Lord during that time. 

In every generation that lives upon the earth there is this wake-up call to what we are here for and what we were born for and what the Father’s heart is for his Son and for his Son’s bride and for all who honour and appreciate Gods love for us. It has been a long delay!
I also believe that when Jesus does return for his bride and the wedding feast is celebrated that there will be people from down through the ages attending that reunion wedding feast that have been awake and alive to the Father’s heart for this occasion for his Son.

Paul dwelt thoroughly on the relational aspect of Christ and his Bride when he spoke of presenting his bride as having her soul cleansed by his Word and having a heart of inner beauty that is without spot or blemish.
Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish

Paul was always urging the church to awaken and to reawaken into a conscious awareness of the nearness of God with us at all times, and not to allow the difficulties and distractions of the world to weary us into a spiritual slumber.
Romans 13:11 You know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep

Paul saw that the uncertainties of the future and the fatigue of past struggles had allowed a lethargy of spirit to take over peoples’ souls that he had in his care, and he went to great lengths to remind them to live in the present moment and not in the vagaries of time that had been wasted or lost or anxious that time was running out.

He pressed upon them to take hold of the available grace that abounded towards them if only they would trust and believe. Paul saw himself as co-labouring and cooperating with God on their behalf and stirs them to be of a similar disposition of working together with God and for God. He writes, ‘I heard you at the right time and came to give you salvation but be aware that the time is right now for your grace to fully co-operate in this day of salvation’ (2Corinthians 6:1) 
Act now, Paul urges, for this is the acceptable (and only) time to do so. It is not only having had salvation come to you once and that is all there is to it, but it is time for your salvation to live in you and come out of you from a conscious kingdom life within you. 
He was saying, God hasn’t stopped labouring but have you stopped co-labouring.

How do we cooperate and co-labour?
We occupy the now (and only) moment of grace in his presence which is to us a place of safety and refuge. To do this we need to stop, be still, and engage our mind to focus upon his life actively streaming its goodness towards us.
We then trust and fully believe that God is working his Kingdom of heaven life into our earthly lives and circumstances to bring them into the order of his Heavenly life.
We trust and believe that God is redeeming and restoring our past experiences of loss and disorder in our lives into a thankful now present place of peace and order.
And that gives us new hope as we look forward to an ongoing Kingdom ordered life for the future.

 

Glorify God in Your Body and in Your Spirit

GLORIFY GOD IN YOUR BODY AND IN YOUR SPIRIT (1Corinthians 6:20)

John Chapter 13 speaks of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last supper, and through to John Chapter 17 Jesus speaks his final words to his disciples before he and his disciples go out from the Passover Feast into the garden where he is betrayed by Judas and arrested. Between Chapters 13 and 17 Jesus prepares his disciples for the new life of the Kingdom within them that will come after his resurrection. He shares with them of the coming of the Holy Spirit that will abide with them and transform them and lead them into all truth concerning the words he has spoken to them. 
In Chapter 17 he finishes with his astounding prayer to his Father concerning the glory of God that will be seen through them and through all those that come after them that truly believe in his indwelling presence. 

John 17:22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

This remarkable Scripture tells us that we have been given a share of the glory of God that was given to Jesus. This glory of God is exhibited by our oneness with God and our unity with one another so that the world will know that Jesus was sent into the world by the Father. 
The glory of God is the outward expression of the awe and wonder of an unseen God who dwells within us as we consciously dwell within him. In this Scripture Jesus is praying that we will see that glory of God at work in our lives. We will see ourselves being present with him where he is in his resurrected human form, and at the same time he is where we are in our day to day circumstances no matter what they are. When we take hold of that fact by our faith, we can go though any trial or tribulation because he is with us in it, comforting, encouraging, strengthening and empowering us.

Paul tells us that our spirit carries the inner glory of God as we acknowledge that we are joined in one spirit to his spirit, and that our bodies are the outward expression of that inner glory. 
1 Corinthians 6:20 For you were bought at a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. 
God does the supernatural work of bringing his will to pass in our inner lives and we make ourselves available for him to express himself in our outer bodily lives in a simple and often very ordinary and unspectacular manner. He does not give us his glory for us to take any outer glory for ourselves, but he can be glorified through us. It is not a matter of our physical appearance or performance. We may be young and energetic or elderly and frail, educated or uneducated, glamourous or plain, rich or poor, it doesn’t matter. All he needs in us is a yielded heart to express the power of the love and wisdom that he wishes to bring about in our world.

The Bible tells us that Jesus did not have a spectacular physical appearance that drew people to him as some kind of celebrity. He was a plain and ordinary looking person.
Isaiah 53:2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no stateliness about him and he was not suave or handsome that we should want to stare at him, and he had no appeal that we should be attracted to him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces. He was shunned, and we did not highly regard him. 

Jesus came to embody the nature of the Godhead and to glorify God in his body and not impress the world with any success or celebrity status. 
John 17:4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. 
Jesus saw the eternal glory that awaited him and he knew that whatever his body looked like or how well it could physically perform it was sufficient to fulfil the will of his Father and glorify him on this earth. Jesus said A body have you prepared for me; ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God. (Hebrews 10:5)
Jesus knew that his body was there to embody God’s purpose, and that gave everything that happened in his body its true meaning.

Paul understood this reality concerning his own body and that all that mattered to him was who he was in Christ. He knew his body was simply a vessel to express the inner glory of God through him and he held his body together as best he could just for that.
1Corinthians 9:27 But I discipline my body and bring it under control, just in case that after preaching to others, I should end up letting God down.
He was very aware of his physical infirmities and ailments and knew he had no glamour to impress the crowd. 
2Corinthians 10:10 “For his letters,” they say, “are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.
Paul knew that no matter what his physical limitations were that he just had to be there doing his best and letting God do the rest. 
He also knew that the church people sometimes derisively compared him to other self-appointed apostles and thought of him as a bit of a loser, but he told them he wasn’t going to compete or compare himself with them. His last word on the matter was ‘he who glories, let him glory in the Lord’ For not he who commends himself is approved, but he whom the Lord commends (vs.18). 
Paul knew that outward appearances could be deceptive. What looks strong on the outside may be pathetic on the inside and what looks feeble on the outside may be strong and durable on the inside. Living creatures of many species do their best to glamorize the outside in order to look attractive or even tough – puffer fish and peacocks 

It was around three hundred years after Paul’s ministry that the Church began to glorify the outward appearance of things in just about every aspect of Christian practice. The early Church prior to that time was not interested in worldly power or influence. There were no genuine apostles or prophets that held celebrity status or lavishly enriched themselves as ministers of the Gospel. 
But then the Emperor Constantine declared himself as being a Christian and made Christianity the main religion of Rome, and he created Constantinople, which became the most powerful city in the world, and from that point on over the next few centuries Christianity began to take on the status of ‘Christendom’ and in many ways it resembled a worldly Christian kingdom (and still does) and outward power replace inner strength. However, the heart of Christianity has remained alive and well and devoted men and women up to this day give themselves, spirit soul and body, to live their lives to glorify God through Jesus Christ and to bless millions and millions of people. 

We may be living in the times when the Holy Spirit is calling people back into the kind of inner focus upon the glory of God that can dwell within us and be expressed through us no matter how impressive or unimpressive weak we may appear on the outside. 
We may be living in the times when Jesus as head over the Church is calling forth his Bride Company to be ready for him with hearts that respond to his love and wish to spend more time in his presence.
We may be living in the times once again when the Father is speaking to us as beloved brothers and sisters of his Son Jesus to express his glory through his Body the Church, the Body of Christ. 

Does the Church as the Body of Christ glorify God and reflect the nature of God in love and unity? (John 13:35), and is the Church salt and light in the world (Matthew 5:13)?
The Church once was all of those things and it can become all of those things once again.
The logical way for the corporate expression of God’s glory through his Body in the earth is for those individuals who call themselves Church to personally live in a new way of life in Christ that offers hope for people to live a new kind of human life that is not prey to the vengeful and unforgiving patterns of this world that destroy the human soul.

When Paul wrote to the churches that made up ‘the Church’ he taught them pastorally as individuals with a personal responsibility to reflect the glory of God in their own bodies and that that would translate into a corporate expression of the glory of God in the Body of Christ. In his apostolic capacity he also addressed the Church corporately, not with the business of having political influence but with the same spiritual issues of love and forgiveness and unity. His words to the church in Rome stated this 

Romans 12:1 present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (logicos latreia – logical service – the logical way to serve God!), and be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…

He taught them of the inner spiritual pathway of spending valuable time with God and in his Word that leads to the finding of the true eternal self. As that true identity of being one in spirit with the Lord begins to take shape in a person’s life they begin to grow in faith in the mercy and grace of God that is freely available to them. Sometimes you see God shining through as they grow in confidence of who they really are in God, and what they really believe concerning his power to reorder and transform a person’s soul. Their bodies have been presented to God as holy and acceptable to him and have become more available to influence and overcome the artificial imaginations and ideologies and hollow power structures that abound in the world immediately around them. That is the only logical way for the corporate expression of the Body of Christ to emerge out of a multitude of singular gleams of light that glorify God in the earth. 

 

 

 

What is Man

WHAT IS MAN 

Hebrews 2:5 What is man that You are mindful of him… 
or the son of man that You look compassionately upon him?
You made him a little lower than the angels;
You crowned him with glory and honor,
and set him over the works of Your hands.
You have put all things in subjection under his feet.

In this Scripture the word for man is Anthropos which generically includes all humans, not just males, and it is where the word anthropology comes from which is the study of mankind and human societies and their cultural development. God is mindful of Man, humanity, and in fact that word mindful (mnaomai) in the Greek has an emphasis of ‘being a fixture of the mind’. That Scripture also says that ‘man has been created of a lower order that the angels’ because humanity is a spirit being with a body and soul
whereas angels are pure spirit beings.  
Humanity is a ‘fixture of the mind’ of God because we have been made in the image of God to reflect his nature of love and creativity and we have been chosen to be his family of sons and daughters in the earth, but not so for angels. 

Everything that God creates has a degree of separation from him because of having a lower order of being than God, but only angels and humanity have a free will and a consciousness of self-identity that can choose to live in loving and grateful obedience to God, or to choose a mindset of independent separation from God. It was an angel of darkness, Lucifer, that tempted mankind to disobey God and from that moment on a state of independent assertion of the human will has been under the sway of that darkness and has acted in favour of its own interest instead of God’s. 
From the time of Adam through to Jesus every human soul lived with an individual sense of identity their ‘I am’ (Greek=ego), which was their idea of who they were. This idea of who they were depended mostly upon what was reflected back to them by those who had influence over them in their world. They also had a conscience that guided them to do what was deemed to be right or wrong and they had a free will to follow their conscience or to break the rules and take the consequences. 

During that time frame between Adam and Jesus, God set aside a nation of people called Israel and he gave them Commandments and a Law of life to guide them in the highest practice of wisdom and knowledge concerning how a person should live before their creator God. This determined their conscience of right and wrong and gave them a sense of identity, of who they were before God and themselves and the world.

That Scripture goes on to say that in time there would come a certain someone called ‘the Son of Man (Anthropos, Mankind, Humanity,)’ whom God would crown with glory and honour and place all things in subjection under his feet - Jesus son of God and Man.
In the days before Jesus died on the cross, he began to explain a mystery to his disciples about how they would become one in being with himself and the Father through the work of the Holy Spirit. It was difficult for them to understand this mystery and he told them that when the Holy Spirit came (after his resurrection), he would reveal this truth to them.

John 14:19 A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you… These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

Jesus was telling them that they would live with a new sense of who they really were, as a new Anthropos, with a new ‘I am’ (ego), being one with God in the Spirit, and drawing life from a new source of being and power, from God himself. Jesus knew he would have to depend upon the Holy Spirit to reveal this individually to each person, but he still said it and assured them that they would remember what he said.

But just to make sure they knew the practical meaning of what he was saying he went on to tell them the parable of the vine and the branches.
John 15:4 I am the true vine, Take care to live in me, and let me live in you. For a branch can't produce fruit when severed from the vine. Nor can you be fruitful apart from me.

Those disciples walked with Jesus and were taught this Kingdom mystery by him through many parables during his ministry and they still found this mystery difficult to understand in their natural minds. But there was another apostle called Paul who did not walk with Jesus during his ministry or hear his parables, and who had to receive this truth of becoming a new creation the way we have to receive it, from a revelation of faith, through the grace of God. Paul’s revelation to us of who we are in Christ is perfect and complete and is waiting, alive and ready for each individual in each new generation of believers to embrace this Gospel of grace and to live it out.

After Jesus died and rose again and the Holy Spirit was sent from Heaven to the earth upon all of Mankind (anthropos – man – humanity) and then everything changed.
The apostle Paul was the one who was able to illuminate the words that Jesus had spoken to his Jewish disciples to all the nations, not just Jews. 

Paul explained the mystery to all the world that the old ‘I am’ (the ego) of the historical old anthropos (Man) could now receive a new ‘I am’ as a new Man, in Christ. This was the good news that Paul was given from God to tell all the world. He called this the ‘mystery that has been hidden through all the ages - Christ in you the hope of glory’ (Colossians 1:27) His challenge was to help people understand how to manage a life with the existence of two ‘I ams’ (egos) in the same person, the old anthropos and the new anthropos. Which ego would win the identity contest about who was the real ‘I am’?

Paul spoke of his personal understanding of this when he explained how to live real Christianity to us. it is no longer I (ego) who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I (ego) now live in the body I live in the Son of God by faith, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I (ego) do not hold back this work of the Grace of God (Galatians 2:20).
The revelation of this reality gives a person an entirely new mindset of who they really are. They are no longer held back by a self-centred ‘I am’ ego which has done its best by trying to be virtuous. They can now adopt the new mindset (repentance) of being one with God and they can live from a new ‘I am’ that is graced with the Spiritual power and love and wisdom of Christ. They need no longer see themselves as being an isolated individual totally dependent upon their own resources and feeling separated from the blessing of a loving God within them. 

Paul writes to us about this process when he says. Discard your old anthropos (Mankind, Ego,) and your former way of life, which is corrupted by deception and wrong desires and instead, let the Spirit renew your mind and attitudes. Put on your new anthropos (New ‘I am’) created to be with God and like God—aligned with God and set apart for him. (Ephesians 4:17)

A person who lives this kind of a life of faith will find themselves pausing to stop and reconsider which ‘I am’ they are living out of. Our old ‘I am’ Ego doesn’t want to die. It wants to win the ‘I am’ contest. The Holy Spirit has been sent into the world to win that struggle within us (John 16:8). He works to renew our mind so that just as we are a fixture of the mind of God – What is Man that you are mindful of him – so we make God  
a fixture of our mind to live within his life. 

Our natural born I am (ego) has been created in the image of God with a uniquely individual personality and a potential for remarkable skills and amazing creativity that can live out of a good conscience and grow in character and integrity. We live with an individual sense of identity which is our idea of who we are, and our natural I am can live a relatively good life and find a personal fulfilment as far as life in this disordered world can afford it. Our natural I am also has the potential to behave in a self-serving and ungodly way that can be harmful to ourselves and those around us, but God knows each heart and will deal justly with each one of us.
Our new spiritually born I am is that old natural born ‘I am’ learning live by faith in a surrendered union with the indwelling life of God. It finds a new sense of identity which is based upon God’s perfect idea of who we are in oneness with his life. This new I am can reach the true potential that God sees in us rather than the limited potential of what we strive to imagine.

The Bible says that The Holy Spirit shows us our true ‘I am’ in God’s Word. It is like a mirror so that when I look into it I see what kind of Anthropos ‘I am’. But when I turn away and do not fix my mind upon God, I forget what kind of ‘I am’ I am. 
James 1:25 But the one who looks into this perfect law of liberty and holds on to what they hear it say to them and lives it and does not forget it will be blessed in everything he does.
Let this be the fixture of your mind that your new ‘I am’ is always you and God together in everything you do. Paul tells us to discard the old limited and isolated Anthropos that gets confused by the uncertainties of life in this disordered world and plunge into the new Anthropos and taste Heaven while living on this earth living a reordered life that begins to reorder everything around you.

A person who puts this into practice and who spends generous time in the presence of the Lord while quietly allowing The Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus and the Father to them will find themselves oddly feeling the things that God feels and thinking the things that God is thinking in a subtle but certain way, and hearing the things that God says. They will go through difficult times being comforted by the wonder of a loving God always with them in the pain of this life. They will do the things that God prompts them to do and they will know that everything strangely happens to bring about his perfect will and purpose for them, and they will give thanks.