Mr. Flesh Goes to Washington

If there is one thing that brings out the worst in people it is an election year and social issues.  It seems like we are constantly being bombarded with some cause, some reason to unite and rally against or for something.  It is hard to find an automobile that doesn’t take some stand with its bumper sticker or ribbon magnet. And we can hardly turn on the television without seeing some law-firm telling us we may be entitled. Proponents incite us with their rhetoric, we are urged to RISE UP and either be loud or be generous, or both, till this wrong is righted.  With 2012 being an election year in the United States, countless groups are lobbying to make sure their concerns are taken seriously by each candidate, as they demand to know his solution for their plight?

How should the believer respond in the midst of all this?  First of all we must ask what fellowship does light have with darkness.  Can corruption possibly spawn incorruption?  Are we to look to the world or any man to meet our needs?  As we have seen in prior posts, we wrestle not against flesh, because our needs are not fleshly!  Every issue we face, in this realm comes from the fact that there is a corrupt system in operation which opposes the truth of Christ’s kingdom.  No matter what label man assigns to the problem, the correct plan of action for the believer will NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER change; our solution lies in the wisdom of God. 

It saddens me most when I see believers caught up in the throes of some fleshly movement.  Wearing some placard, chanting some mantra, pointing fingers, making demands.  These issues are real, but the banter is nothing more than a tactic the devil uses to distract and divide.  A believer has no business touting any label other than “RIGHTEOUS”.  Your identity is not in your flesh your identity is in Christ!  Labels like  “Conservative”, Progressive”, “Minority”, “Baby Boomer”, “Flood Victim”, “Unemployed”, “Male”, “Female”, “The 99%”.   You are not oppressed, not a victim and you have no other cause than the cause of Christ.   Man does not have your answer, government does not have your answer and there is no amount of money that will solve your problem.    

Only the Gospel; the message of the accomplished mission of Christ, has the power to save mankind.  God has placed the embodiment of His Son Jesus Christ in us, the Church (the body of Christ) of which He is the head.  God is beseeching the world through us “Be reconciled to me!” (II Cor 5:20) We should stand out like stars against a dark backdrop!  Believers don’t seek the world’s “wisdom”.  Our Father is the only wise King; all that we need is in Him.  He has sent us forth to be an influence in this world and He will remove every obstacle and meet every need to accomplish His will and bring himself glory.   The same power that raised Christ from the dead is alive in us and He has given us the authority to wield it!

THIS is why it is IMPERITIVE in these last days that we learn to live by faith.  God’s intent has always been that His people be a conspicuous anomaly that defies logic.   When the world cannot find answers on its own, it should look to the Church and see a group of people who have a seemingly endless supply for every demand.   When there is tribulation and unrest, and the world is gripped with fear, the Church should be standing at the ready to receive instruction from her commander.  Where there is need, the wisdom of God provides supply.  Where there is injustice, we seek His wisdom, and prepare to act in defense of the weak.  When the Church learns to operate by faith, completely undaunted by the chaos around her, she will see God move in miraculous unexplainable ways.  What man could not accomplish with billions of dollars, endless litigation, protests, riots and wars, God can accomplish with one shepherd boy and a rock.   Does this sound far-fetched?  This is the very strategy by which Christ has always intended to lure the world to His grace, THROUGH US! (Matt 5:13-16)  But the church has become anemic because far too many believers see themselves as flesh, their problems as fleshly, and flesh as the answer to the problem.  

God has purposed each of us for an assignment, we are backed by His name (his authority) and all of Heaven is our sponsor, to enable us to accomplish the task at hand.  Why do we make statements like, “we are only human” and “we are all in the same boat”?  WE ARE NOT!  We are spirit, we should talk, think and act nothing like the world!  We serve a God who saves, and He expects us to expect Him to save.  Do we know the God we serve?  We are His representatives!  He does not ask us in our own power, with limited resources, to save the world; He asks us to represent the One who already has!

Mr. Flesh Goes to the Doctor

If you’ve been reading what I write for any length of time you know I am passionate about the believer’s freedom in Christ, and living in the fullness of what Christ accomplished through the cross. The key is knowing; and God WANTS us to know. He wants to constantly pour Himself into us in the form of His perfect wisdom. The Bible talks often of the importance of “knowing”. Paul prayed that the believers would know and grow in knowledge. When he saw believers living carnal lives, bound by the shackles of sin, he would remind them of who they were, what Christ did, and would often begin by saying “don’t you know?” As our mind is washed over and over by the life giving transforming Word of God, we WILL know! And we will act, because we know.

So you say ok, suppose I know and I act, give me a practical example of how that would look. Ok, but I want to contrast these examples with the “natural” reaction of the carnal man, because we need to keep reminding ourselves that WE ARE NOT WHO WE WERE and we do NOT act or react like the world. Let’s say Mr. Flesh goes to the doctor because of some symptoms. The doctor was his first kneejerk reaction, because he sees no alternative. After sweating over test results for several days the doctor tells him he has cancer. Mr. Flesh is gripped with fear, because he sees no alternative. In desperation he asks the doctor how he is going to go about saving his life, and agrees to go through any kind of hellish treatment, as long as it will save him…because he sees no alternative. The doctor has not only given “his disease” a label, he has given him a prognosis aka. “Here is what this disease is capable of”. The spirit of fear is now dictating Mr. Flesh’s thoughts and directing his words. Mr. Flesh goes home and testifies over and over to everyone he knows, the testimony that the spirit of fear has written for him.  

No matter what you believe regarding healing, every believer’s “reaction” should be the same. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. (Eph 6:12) Which means, we are not wrestling with our flesh, the problem is not in our flesh and the answer does not lie in flesh, plain and simple. First of all, we don’t react based on fleshly evidence. Second of all, we always consult the wisdom of God before we make a move because we are helpless (yes I said HELPLESS, seriously what do WE really know?) to know what to do without His knowledge of the situation! You have to get this! I don’t care how long that doctor went to school and how many accolades he has received! I don’t care how many studies have been done; I don’t care if everyone in your family has died from this very thing for the last 500 years. GOD IS NOT IMPRESSED!!! And neither should you be.

Mr. Born Again-Righteous-New Creation-Spirit Man-Joint Heir With Jesus-Child of God (we will call him Spirit Man for short) says, “God there is this lump I’ve noticed here, should I go have that checked or is that something you just want to take care of right now?” Then in perfect peace, he waits for an answer. If he is prompted to go to the doctor, Christ goes with him to navigate all the information the doctor gives him. If Mr. Sprit Man is waiting for test results, He continues to listen for guidance and God’s wisdom in His word. His testimony is ONLY that of the truth of God’s word, not based on any physical evidence but based on the truth of what God has said about himself. His faith is bolstered as he reads that Christ his healer resides inside of him. The peace of God rules in his heart. Peace is making decisions, not fear. Whatever that doctor’s diagnosis is whatever the prognosis, whatever the recommendation, it will not sway Mr. Spirit Man, and it will not be the basis for his decision or his outcome. He tells the doctor, “Thank you very much, I will get back to you and let you know how we wish to proceed.” The doctor stresses the urgency of treatment beginning immediately! Mr. Spirit Man calms the doctor and tells him not to worry; he will get back to him shortly.

Yes it takes practice; our flesh is used to reacting to what it sees. Don’t let it get away with that. Tell your flesh “There is a new sheriff in town and we aren’t doing things the way we used to!” And let’s get over ourselves, if God is for us who can be against us? (Rom 8:31) paraphrased: What’s the worst thing that can happen? And ask yourself, if I really live this way…what are the possibilities!

Who's Your Daddy?

As born again believers, knowing and believing that we are NO LONGER who we were is foundational and vital to our walk.  As unbelievers we had no understanding of who we were, why we were, or what we were to accomplish.  Once we are reconciled to our creator the Holy Spirit immediately begins sharing truth with us so we understand not only our purpose, but also the means by which we are to accomplish it.  If one is led to salvation in Christ, but he sees no purpose other than escaping hell, this earthly life will seem rather pointless to him.  If he understands his mandate to live a holy life and disciple other believers, but does not realize the power that is afforded him through Christ, his failure to meet the demand will leave him defeated.   The word salvation in the church is widely used, and yet we fail to take into account its FULL benefit!  Our salvation in Christ is complete!  God’s perfect plan left NOTHING undone.  Save in the Greek is the word sozo – to keep safe and sound, to keep from perishing, suffering, to heal or make well, to preserve from danger, injury or peril, to rescue from destruction.  By not understanding what Christ procured for us at the cross, are we setting a good portion of His sacrifice aside and making His grace of no effect in our lives? 

God did not just save us from, He saved us to.  Not only are we no longer who we were, our location and the rules, have changed.  In the previous posting, “Labels” I said that “we have NO RIGHT to give preeminence to any voice other than God.  His wisdom alone is perfect and His way alone is truth and His ways alone are free from corruption.  Any other “word” will be perverted to some degree because this worldly system has been corrupted by sin and is subject to death”.   God fully expects us to seek His wisdom for every situation.  This should come naturally to us; in fact it should seem foreign for us to go the world for answers.  The solution may very well come from earthly mechanisms, but He has instructed us to lean not to our own understanding, even if it seems perfectly logical.   We are no longer in agreement with the world system; we are in covenant with the Living God!  Would you go down the street and ask the neighbor’s husband to help you deal with one of your children, or to ask his opinion in buying a new appliance or moving to a new house?  NO, you would speak privately with your own husband!  

We are not of the world, our agenda is different, our views are different, our understanding is different…we are “other worldly”, our needs are other worldly.  If we think our needs are fleshly our mind is un-renewed.  Our need may be visible in this realm, but the solution will always come from the faith realm because that is the delivery system that our Father uses to meet our needs.  Yes, the supply will manifest physically, here in this world, but the source of our supply does not come from material things, faith is the substance of what we hope for.  (Do you remember the posts on the Law of Faith?)  A “need” in the life of a believer is a signal that God wants to display His power in us!  This has always been the plan.  This is why the believer has joy in every trial, because it is an opportunity for our God to show the world that salvation is found in no one else and He is ever faithful and vigilant in regard to His own!

    

Remember, the world system has been corrupted by Satan; it no longer resembles the righteous government that God intended.   Why would we, the righteousness of the Father, heirs with Christ, members of the royal family, look to this corrupt, broken, impotent system to achieve the will of the Father?  Do we know who we are?  We have been translated into the kingdom of Christ (Col 1:13).  He is our king and the supplier, of every need, remover of every obstacle!  Does it make sense that we enter into the enemy’s camp and ask him for help? Do we know who we are?  Do we know who Christ has made us?  The “wisdom” of the world is foolishness; we embody the living Christ, all wisdom and power belong to Him!  The merchandise of His wisdom is better than that of silver, or the gain of fine gold! (Prov. 3:14)

Label Me Righteous

The desire of my heart is to see believers walking in ALL the freedom that Christ procured for us at His cross.   Many believers, sincere believers, have no idea how to get out of the inconsistent walk they are now experiencing.  Joy one day, feeling hopeless the next, and having no idea what changed from one day to the next.   God withheld nothing from us to ensure that we walk in victory, our part is simply to know and believe and receive.   The reason for this “Evidence of Truth” blog is to get believers to challenge the concepts that have kept them defeated.  Walking in power and joy is simple, WE have made it difficult.

As we have been discussing, we have to live by faith in order to receive supernatural supply from Christ our leader.  Listen to what I am going to say and don’t ever forget this truth.  Believers believe FIRST and then SEE because they have believed the Word of God.  Believers DO NOT have faith in the Word of God because they have SEEN!    This is so simple but you have to let it sink into your heart.   Once it does, NOTHING will be impossible.  You will realize that when you had to see to believe, you were really limiting the possibilities and you will have more hope once you realize that anything can happen because it is NOT based on only what you have at your disposal visually, it is based on God’s unending supply of whatever we need to carry out His mission. 

The foundational truth that will change your perspective is that you are NOT who you were.  You are a new creature, you are not bound by your flesh, and you are not a “recovering sinner”.  You ARE the righteousness of God IN CHRIST JESUS!  You ARE in Him and His righteousness HAS BEEN imputed to you.  This is where living by faith begins.  When you believe it because it is truth, there will be supernatural changes in you.  Do not waste time trying to change your behavior to become what God says you already are.  It has nothing to do with the behavior; you are, because it is truth.  You will see it, when you believe this truth.  Trust me!  Don’t waste one more second doing the same thing you have done for years with little result. 

We have NO RIGHT to give preeminence to any voice other than God.  His wisdom alone is perfect and His way alone is truth and His ways alone are free from corruption.  Any other “word” will be perverted to some degree because this worldly system has been corrupted by sin and is subject to death.  Yes?  Ok, so every time we receive any type of label, other than Righteous, are we receiving truth?  Labels received, change the way we think.  That is why it is imperative that we do not receive the labels of the world, but maintain our testimony that we are righteous, blameless and loved.

So let me get real with you for a second.  And before you react, listen to the Holy Spirit inside of you that is challenging your faith to come up higher.   When you parrot some label someone has put on you, such as Impulsive, Lazy, Loudmouth, Emotional, isn’t it your testimony that you have elevated this man given label above the God given truth of who God says you are?  Let’s not stop there, what about those whose wisdom we believe we can’t question, like Doctors?  When they label us Depressed, Bi-Polar, ADD, Alcoholic, Addict; do we have to receive it?  Is it truth?  What about receiving disease labels?  Cancer, Pneumonia, Lupus, Fibro Myalgia?  Just ask yourself, how do I reconcile these labels with who God says I am? 

Don’t use what you’ve always been told or taught to explain this away.  Exercise your faith, let yourself be stretched.  Stop living safe, what if you believe and you don’t see instant results?  What if it doesn’t work for the woman down the street, what if you tried it once and saw nothing?  What if what if what if?  It doesn’t matter, believe anyway!  The evidence WILL follow.  Keep believing as if there is no alternative!  Nail that back door of unbelief shut!  Believe until!  We are not done with this, but press God on this issue, He wants you to, He wants to take you deeper, but He wants to know you will not cut and run at the first sign of disappointment.  What if you stay where you are?  Nothing will change.  But what if……..

 

Above the Law

My intent has always been to provoke you to think differently regarding, who Christ is, what He has accomplished and who you are in Him.  We have talked a lot recently about how the born again believer operates under a different set of principles.  We are not who we appear to be on the outside, our old man; that corrupt man, beguiled by the enemy of God to live a life of confusion and futility, that man died at the cross with Christ.   We are LITERALLY a new man.  When our spirit man was “asleep”, out of communication with the Father, we were like aimless satellites that had lost communication with their remote controllers.  Now we have been reconciled to the Father and communication has been reestablished, we no longer bounce haphazardly off other objects in space, subject to the atmospheric disturbances.  We were programmed at our inception to carry out the plan and purpose that our creator designed for us long before we were ever conceived.  We have a mission!  And in order to be successful, we must be allowed to operate “above the law”.   

Think about all we have talked about lately.  How Christ is alive on the inside of us and it is no longer our flesh that is navigating in this world but His Spirit inside of us to accomplish His will on the earth.  When Christ was on the earth, He operated “above the law”.  He healed, He raised the dead, He multiplied solid matter into more solid matter, He walked on water, and He escaped His enemies undetected until the appointed time when He MADE Himself subject to them.  So if Christ is alive in us, are we subject to carnal laws?  Ok, don’t jump ship just yet, stay with me.  God instructs us to “make ourselves subject” to the rulers that are on the earth because He is the power behind every power.  We are to obey authority!  We also see ourselves hindered by natural laws such as gravity.  So before I tell you where I think we as believers are to come down on this issue, let me give you an analogy. 

Ambulance drivers have the authority to run red lights, drive on the wrong side of the road and exceed the speed limit in order to carry out their assignment.  Policemen can shoot to kill if necessary.  A judge can deprive someone of their right to freedom and a prison guard can hold an inmate against his will for a prolonged time.  If any of these people committed any of these acts while not under the protection of their “office”, they would be guilty of driving infractions, kidnapping, or even murder.   During much of our time on this earth, we make ourselves subject to the same laws everyone else is subject to.  But in order to carry out our assignment, we have to be able to rise above the confines of natural law and operate supernaturally by the law of faith. 

Throughout the Bible God deals differently with those who are in covenant with Him.  We need to see ourselves as set apart and be prepared in every situation to act and react differently than the rest of the world, based on the voice and instruction of our God.   We should ALWAYS be listening for that voice, ALWAYS expecting a supernatural outcome.   God has made us a peculiar people.  In the Old and New Testament that meant a purchased valuable treasure, to be preserved.  Even today the definition denotes a spectacle, something that is seen as being different than the norm.  We HAVE to see ourselves that way!  We have to be prepared at any moment to be called on to trust in Christ to enable us to operate above the law.  Nothing hindered Jesus from carrying out His mission when He was here in the flesh, and nothing should hinder Christ now!  When we came into covenant with Him we agreed that He could have FREE UNFETTERED ACCESS to our bodies! 

We will go deeper into this concept of operating “above the law” next time.  I will let you chew on that for a couple of days.  If you like to do word studies in your Bible, study and meditate on the word “subject”.  Decide for yourself.  What were we subject to, what are we subject to today and what is made subject to us through Christ.  Next time we will see how we have unwittingly agreed with the devil in receiving labels that do not apply to us.

Don't Tamper With the Mail (part II)

There is power in the good news of Christ.  This message alone can save all of mankind from the curse that he is under.  And what is that message?  CHRIST IN US! The hope of glory! (Col 1:27) Christ is the message; He is the Word that is preached! When a heart grabs hold of that message, it is literally grabbing hold of the living Christ and saying, DON’T GO!  You are what I need!  When we receive his word He is imparting His very being into us.  As believers, every time we read the Word of God, more of Christ’s actual being is made known to us, and what is revealed to us BELONGS to us!  That is what changes us.  We were NEVER meant to go to His Word and use it as a “guide” to “be a better Christian”.  If that is how we treat it, any book from the Library will do.  Does that seem harsh?  It is not adhering to the teachings that change us, it is SEEING and RECEIVING Christ right into our very being, and that is a spiritual transaction that only the Holy Spirit can enact.

Let’s look at Colossians 1:27 closely.  Have you always assumed the glory promised was not until you see heaven? Hope in the Greek is elpis (expectation of good) and glory in Greek is doxa (a condition or state, a good estimation or opinion of).  This verse literally says that because of the revelation of the mystery of Christ IN US we can have an expectation that God is going to be good toward us!  And because of His glory in us, we now have a good opinion of Him which grows, and we can be confident that He has a good opinion of us!  Isn’t that the crux of it?  In the fall, man lost the glory that he embodied so not only did his estimation of himself change, he also began to fear God because his estimation of who God was had changed as well.   Through Christ, we are reconciled back to that glory.  We see Him accurately and since we now embody God’s righteousness because of His Son, we see ourselves accurately, as we were always meant to be.  We are at peace. 

It seems simple, but this revelation alone can transform a heart in the blink of an eye.  If as believers we are waiting for the hope of this glory to appear in Heaven, we will never realize the joy and the victory that is ours NOW.   This really is the message that saves.  The “doing” part was DONE.  Hebrews 10:7 says …the volume of the book is written of ME! Christ!  It all points to HIM!  Because when we SEE Him we will be changed.  And before that verses 5 and 6 say He finds NO pleasure in our trying, He wants a body that He can LIVE IN!  That’s all!  We make this way harder than it has to be.  Once we see the truth of who He is, He only asks us to yield to Him so He can live through us to bring about all that He purposed for us.  We get to just stand back in awe and watch Him at work.  So instead of a life of “trying to live FOR Jesus” He lives His life in us and we rest in who He is. 

Do you feel butterflies in your stomach right now at the possibility that it really is this simple?  That is His Spirit inside you recognizing truth.  Grab onto it.  Don’t let that other voice inside you turn you back the way you came.  How has that worked for you?  How many Christians do you know living that lie?  Do they have joy?  Consistently?  Are they victorious? Consistently?  Someone’s speech can reveal in a second what they truly believe.  Do you know believers that it seems like they always have some crisis going on, or their speech is a litany of complaints, always criticizing others or themselves? 

Our only HOPE is Christ in us, not a better us.  This is what the message was before man tampered with the mail and tried to make the message better.  It was too simple for our flesh before.  Man had to get his sticky little fingers on it and make himself a project.  There is NO fixing this flesh, when we realize that and just let Christ live IN US, then we will really begin to live!  There is so much freedom in Him when you see that it’s really all Him, and He left nothing for us to do but trust in His goodness.  Please meditate on Hebrews 10 this week; do you see that He wants us to be guilt free in our conscience as well? He did a complete work in us and He completely completed it! Now we are complete in Him! 

Don't Tamper With the Mail (part I)

There is so much confusion in the body of Christ as to the purpose of the individual believer and the role of the Church here on the earth.  The message is simple and powerful.  God and man were in perfect harmony, and God gave man the right to rule over himself.  Man was taken captive and held hostage by Satan, and was now subject to a dictator.  God sent His Son, who won a decisive victory over Satan, stripped him of his dictatorship, and annulled his right to rule over us.  At that point all that was left to do was to go announce to man was that he was free!   The truth began to spread; men everywhere enlisted in the new Kingdom, and went forth as an army, to liberate all those that had been forced into slavery under the law of sin and death. 

The ruler of the slave kingdom feared the message of freedom and set about to sow seeds of confusion among the hearers.  The message took on a different tone.  Many were being told that their liberation hinged on certain requirements and standards that must be met.  This message was not one of hope, and freedom, but simply bondage to a new set of requirements, a message that said their freedom could be maintained by daily good works and behavior modification.   Many chose to stay and serve under the dictatorship of death, they had grown accustomed to the current workload, and the “good works” option seemed cumbersome.  Their hearts were darkened from years of indoctrination by their perpetrator, and only the light of the TRUE GOSPEL could free them from their chains.  Those that did opt for good works, were soon disillusioned, the freedom that was promised was impossible to maintain as this ruler seemed as hard to please as the last one.  

The Church should be an unstoppable force, moving en masse in one direction, with one clear objective.  Instead, we have turned our weapons inward and seem intent on devouring our self whole.   If the devil’s plan was to divide and conquer, we have walked unflinchingly into his trap.  Discipleship has become an assembly line where we stamp out Methodists, Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans and Charismatics, instead of as Paul puts it “imitators, and followers of me (Paul) as I am of Christ.  (I Cor. 1:11)  Paul had complete confidence in the message that was given to him by God.  Remember Paul was not a disciple of Christ while Christ was alive; the gospel that Paul preached was divinely imparted to him by the Holy Spirit.  It was not the teachings of Jesus and it was not the message that Peter preached to the Jews.  Much of the confusion in the Church comes from a “mashing” of the Word of God and not recognizing what it is saying to whom.  I call it the “gospel mash” it caught on in a flash, it was a graveyard smash.  

This is a whole kettle of fish I will not get into today, but I would urge you in reading your Bible, take the time, with the Holy Spirit as your teacher, to understand what role you are playing today as a believer, and the role of the Church.  If we call ourselves believers why are we at such odds with other believers?  How could ONE message with ONE purpose have taken on a life of its own?  Somewhere along the way, we stopped being the ministrants of the message and made it personal.  I am reminded of what my small group leader says frequently, “don’t tamper with the mail, just deliver it.”  I want to be on the earth to see the Church become all that Christ intended for it to be.  I want us to realize our purpose and the power that we embody with Christ as our Head!  I want to see this sleeping giant awaken!  I want the devil to be gripped with fear when he hears the rustling of the Body of Christ on the move.  Just as he was when he realized he had not killed the Christ but instead played right into the hands of the Living God.

As with most of my postings that turn into 2 and 3 parters somewhere in the middle, we will continue this train of thought next time.  In fact this does not at all resemble the posting I “thought” I was going to write this morning.  I love it when the Holy Spirit comes in at the last minute and says “Stop the presses!”  It keeps me weak, and dependent on Him.  After all it IS HIS MESSAGE!