Though He Slay Me
January 3, 2022
Though He Slay Me
Job 13:15
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.
This is for those who are walking through the dark places of the shadow of death, of testing and trials. Many have good intentions of encouraging us or helping us understand that place, but how can they unless they are where you are and face the fears and the terrors that you face. The two things that you have, that you are holding on too with all your strength, are your physical life and your faith in the eternal life. When death, hell and the grave rise up to daily confront us, then all the foundations of faith in God are shaken as it attacks in its pain and fears to separate us, condemn us and crush that hope within. It can bring us to even despair of this physical life, until all we want to do is give up, let go of it and sleep.
Know this; you are not in this place to fail and be defeated, but to triumph through the Resurrection Life within you. “For the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you! Romans 8:11 declares to us, “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Wrap your arms of faith and hope around the promises of God and refuse to let go. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward [man] is renewed day by day.” The outward man isn’t our strength, it isn’t our hope and it is but the container of the Life out of which we live. Our life is so much more than even physical life. Job had a revelation of this. He knew that as long as he maintained his integrity and hope in God, then even the grave itself could not defeat or rob him. It was only if he gave up on God and turned his back on the faith that the enemy could triumph. This is the hope resident in you that is greater than life itself, because it lives beyond this present physical life. Fear and death may try and wrest it from your hand, but whatever else happens let us all go to the grave with our faith and hope in God intact. Meanwhile fight the good fight. Don’t allow condemnation to come in through thoughts or other individuals, for God isn’t here to condemn you. If you have been washed in the blood of the Lamb then no accuser has grounds to tell you that you are worthless or deserving of what you are enduring. Your life is hid with Christ in God. The devil and hell itself will have to come through God to get to you. You are His. He redeemed you with the precious price of His blood and you are forever precious in His sight, for you are His possession.
Rest in Him. You are weary in the battle. Your strength is gone. So, rest in Him who is your strength; rest in Him who is your life. Enter into the Christ within; make your abiding and fellowship there. The Lord wants to lift you above your circumstances today and invite you into the garden of His presence and life. There you will find rest and refreshment; hope and faith. There you will rise up to be more than a conquer through Christ who has loved you, for there is nothing that can separate you from His love. He is your refuge, your high tower, your shield and buckler. It is the Lion of Judah that has come forth in His holy raiment to fight your battles and triumph through you. Though the outward man is frail and weak, let the inward man wax stronger and stronger through faith, having your eyes fixed on Him who is your life and the reason you live and move and have your being. Everything else is a name whether it is cancer, disease, poverty, afflictions, sickness, infirmities, trial, persecutions or tribulations, but there is a name above every name and HIS NAME IS JESUS! He is your hope! Your hope is not in man, medicines, finances, or in the technological abilities and provisions of this world; it is still only and forever in Jesus.
Rest your life upon His breast. Let go of all your fears and concerns. Christ is your rest. He is your life and your victory remains your hope in Him.
Blessings,
#kent
The Pathway of Life
June 12, 2015
Proverbs 12:28
In the way of righteousness [is] life; and [in] the pathway [thereof there is] no death.
The Pathway of Life
The Word teaches us that the way of life is the way of righteousness. In that pathway there is no death. Today, when we walk in Christ we are walking in life. There is spiritual life and power resident and at work in your life. If we think that somehow that righteousness comes from our natural man we err and do not walk in the truth. It is because we died and were crucified with Christ and now, in spirit, we have been raised with Him in resurrection life. Romans 8: 10 tells us, “And if Christ [be] in you, the body [is] dead because of sin; but the Spirit [is] life because of righteousness.”
The Apostle Paul speaks to this attitude of righteousness in his life in Philippians 3:8-11, “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” The way of righteousness is the way of a Christ centered life where we endeavor to walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh. It is the spiritual law and principle of life that we find clearly defined in Romans 8:1-8, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Condemnation at work in our life brings death, but in Christ there is no condemnation for He has washed us in His blood and forgiven all of our iniquities. He has raised us up in the newness and righteousness of His life. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” It is the blood and our fellowship with Jesus that restores us and keeps us in the paths of righteousness and life.
Let us keep ourselves with all diligence in the pathway of righteousness and life. The Lord Jesus Christ has gone before us to make the way for us to walk in that righteousness and enjoy the benefits of His divine life that is resident within us. In the pathway of righteousness there is no death except to that former way of life, which was death.
Blessings,
#kent
Two Trees
February 16, 2015
John 6:44-59
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. 45It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. 46No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. 50But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
52Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
53Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
Two Trees
Most all of us are familiar with the story in Genesis of Adam and Eve and how God placed them in a garden. In the midst of that garden were two trees, the tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said of all of the trees of the garden you can eat the fruit thereof, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you do you shall surely die. Sure enough, when Adam and Eve yielded to temptation and partook of the fruit of that tree, death entered into the human race and the Pandora’s box of all of it consequences. Before this day it was perfectly acceptable to partake of the tree of life. We have come to know this tree as Christ Jesus who brings us into fellowship, unity and oneness with God. After the fall, the tree of Life was cut off. Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden; a mighty angel was stationed there to prevent their return. They know longer knew the realm of personal fellowship they had once experienced with God. They now lived in the realm of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was not all evil, good did exist there as well, but it was a mixture and was subject to the will of the flesh.
What we actually are hearing Jesus say here in this passage from John 6 is that the tree of Life has been returned to us by the Father to bring us again into a state of fellowship and personal relationship lost through the ages since Adam. Romans 5:18-21 says, “18Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. 20The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Once again we have been given access through the tree of Life back into the realm of Spirit and God is Spirit. There, in that place, we can once again walk with Him, talk with Him and find His rest. In that place we have unity and oneness in Christ and are a part of His family experiencing adoption as sons.
Here is a paradox. Just as the partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil caused Adam to die to the spiritual dimension of God and at the same time become alive to the realm of the flesh and soul, we who, now come into Christ and partake of the tree of Life, must also die. This death is now to tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the flesh and the soul, so that we can become alive in the Spirit and experience the eternal life of Christ. The apostle Paul gives us the key to this revelation in Romans 5: 1-14, “1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. 8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.”
Where we struggle is that even though we become identified with Christ in His death and resurrection in our spirits there is a process of possessing and conquering the land of our soul and body. Just as God gave the Promised Land to the Israelites, they had to go in and conquer the land. Possessing the promise and disposing the former inhabitants in our case of the un-renewed mind, will and emotion; along with the giants of our imaginations and strongholds. Their victory was not in their strength, but it was in the reliance and obedience to the One who had promised. It is our identification with Christ, who He is and what He is, that is our victory within our own mortal being. When we take our eyes and identification off of Him then we find ourselves in the realm of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Which tree are you going to continue to eat from?
Blessings,
#kent
Lord, You Mean Everything
September 17, 2014
Lord, You Mean Everything
Philippians 3:7-14
Yea doubtless, and I count all things [but] loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them [but] dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but [this] one thing [I do], forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
What is our level of commitment today in our walk with the Lord? What does He really mean to us in terms of our life plan, our goals and where we are going and what we hope to accomplish? In the above scripture we are seeing Paul lay out his mission statement and his life plan before us. Does ours sound anything like that? Paul says in the next verses 15 and16, “Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.” He says if you want to be perfect then try this goal on for size. Even in all that Paul had committed of his life to the service of the Lord and even through all that he endured he didn’t say I’m there yet,” but I’m running with all my might.” He lost all affections for the things of this world. He was spiritually minded and heavenly visioned. He so desired to experience the depths and the riches that Christ alone could provide, everything else paled in comparison. I believe Paul wanted to so identify with Christ that in the sharing and partaking of the sufferings of Christ and the conformity to His death, he might experience and lay hold of the resurrection life. That resurrection life was so much more than just dying, going to heaven and experiencing the resurrection at the Second Coming of Christ. He desired to experience the resurrection out of the dead things of this life. What holds us back from experiencing the fullness of life right now if it not the death that works in us? And what is the power of death if it is not sin. The resurrection out of the dead is the resurrection out of the sin and death that works in our members.
Paul says in Romans 8:10-11, “And if Christ [be] in you, the body [is] dead because of sin; but the Spirit [is] life because of righteousness, But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” We may live in the natural realm and as such so much of our energy, thinking and identification is with the things of this world. I believe Paul was saying turn around from the world and look at who you are in Christ. Look what He has provided for us and where He wants to take us. ‘The things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.’ Paul is telling us here in Romans 8 that the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you and I. What is the implication of what He is saying? If we are dead to the flesh, then there is Spirit Power of Resurrection Life at work in us to raise us up in the power of His life. I believe Paul ran and lived his life to lay hold of that resurrection power and life even in his natural life. If he didn’t fully realize it then he carried and ran with that vision right into heaven and into the arms of Jesus. There is a high calling of life and power in Christ that we should yearn and long for. So many of us complacently wait for heaven as the end in itself. Paul wasn’t running that hard just to get to heaven. He had a greater vision and higher calling; he pressed for the high calling that is in Christ Jesus. Again, in Romans 8:19-23 I believe he gives some insight to this calling, “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected [the same] in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only [they], but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, [to wit], the redemption of our body.” The first fruit partakers of this liberty and redemption from corruption will be the administrators of its glory and life to creation. There is coming a day of restoration when all of creation is going to be set free from the bondage of sin and corruption. We who are in Christ should be travailing and groaning within to be free from the bondage of this natural man that we may experience the coming and the presence of Christ within us. Don’t let the realm that we live in now hinder the vision of what you are becoming and living your life for. If we truly live in Spirit life, the natural body and life just facilitates that in this earth, but we should already be living in the light of God’s eternal plan and not just our natural life span. The implications and fruit of how we live our lives carries on into eternity. As many as are perfect or spiritually minded want to catch the vision of God’s highest for us.
In conclusion Paul gives us gravity by saying, don’t look behind you at what you have or haven’t been. Don’t live in past condemnation or victories, but look ahead at what is before you. Set your eyes on Christ and the high calling that is in Him nevertheless wherever it is that you have thus far attained be faithful to walk in the light of the truth that you have and understand the high calling that Christ has called you too.
Blessings,
#kent
Why did Jesus Weep?
December 11, 2012
John 11:35
Jesus wept
Why did Jesus Weep?
Well before we can answer that question we need some background about what has taken place. We need to read John 11 to get the context of what has taken place. Briefly we will summarize, but there is so much here I fear we do an injustice in doing so. Many of you are familiar with the story that Larazus, the brother of Mary and Martha of Bethany, had fallen sick. They were all close friends with Jesus. Mary and Martha had sent a messenger to Jesus saying, “Lord, him you love (so well) is sick.” When he says sick, he is not talking a head cold, he is talking as in sick unto death. Jesus then says, “This sickness is not to end in death; but [on the contrary] it is to honor God and to promote His glory, that the Son of God may be glorified through (by) it.” So even though is it says Jesus loved Mary, Martha and Lazarus dearly, he staid where He was for two more days before traveling to Bethany. Now Jesus finally tells His disciples plainly that Lazarus is dead, but then He says this, “And for your sake I am glad that I was not there; it will help you to believe (to trust and rely on Me). However, let us go to him.” When He gets there He finds a mournful scene as Lazarus has died and He meets up with Martha who has heard He is coming.
Now you can imagine the feelings that Mary, Martha and the rest are going through. They know who Jesus is as the Messiah, they know He has the power to heal and yet even when they called upon the one who says He loves them, He didn’t show up. In their hearts and minds they are hurt, disappointed, maybe even angry. Jesus, you didn’t answer my prayer. Perhaps there have been times when we have been in that place of Mary and Martha. We know and love the Lord, but at some crisis or need we prayed, but He didn’t come through for us as we thought He could have and should have. We have thought, “Lord, if you had only showed up I know the need would have been met.”
Martha converses with Jesus saying, “Master, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. 22And even now I know that whatever You ask from God, He will grant it to You.
23Jesus said to her, Your brother shall rise again.
24Martha replied, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
25Jesus said to her, I am [Myself] the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in (adheres to, trusts in, and relies on) Me, although he may die, yet he shall live; 26And whoever continues to live and believes in (has faith in, cleaves to, and relies on) Me shall never [actually] die at all. Do you believe this?
27She said to Him, Yes, Lord, I have believed [I do believe] that You are the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One), the Son of God, [even He] Who was to come into the world. [It is for Your coming that the world has waited.]” Martha has a revelation of who Christ is. She knows Him as the Savior and she knows Him as the Healer, but she doesn’t really yet know Him as the Resurrection and the Life. Sometimes for a new revelation to come forth, the former one has to pass away. We have to let go of old paradigms and understandings in order to grasp a greater revelation of the unveiling of Christ. Jesus is speaking to her of this, but she does not fully comprehend it yet.
Martha goes to let Mary know Jesus is here and she comes running to him, followed by the group that have been mourning with them. It says in verses 32-38, “When Mary came to the place where Jesus was and saw Him, she dropped down at His feet, saying to Him, Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.
33When Jesus saw her sobbing, and the Jews who came with her [also] sobbing, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. [He chafed in spirit and sighed and was disturbed.] 34And He said, Where have you laid him? They said to Him, Lord, come and see.
35Jesus wept.
36The Jews said, See how [tenderly] He loved him! 37But some of them said, Could not He Who opened a blind man’s eyes have prevented this man from dying?
38Now Jesus, again sighing repeatedly and deeply disquieted, approached the tomb. It was a cave (a hole in the rock), and a boulder lay against [the entrance to close] it.” I believe Jesus really felt and had empathy with their sorrow and pain, but I think that it also grieved Him that they could not see beyond their disappointment and they still doubted Him. It reminds me of the times Jesus would say, “ Oh faithless generation, how long must I endure you?” Jesus wept because of their sorrow, but He also wept because of their doubt and unbelief.
If we really believe Romans 8:28, that, “all thing work for the good of them that love the Lord and are called according to His purpose,” then we have to be able to rest and trust Jesus even when we don’t understand why things happen as they do. Sometimes it is those crisis moments that create significant life changing events. They challenge our faith and belief system. They stretch us beyond our ability to explain and rationalize what has happened. Then we are faced with, “do I get angry and turn from Him, or do I trust Him.” Trust isn’t based in understanding; on the contrary, it is often trusting in what you don’t understand.
Jesus then had them roll back the stone where Lararus was buried for four days. He looked to heaven and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. 42Yes, I know You always hear and listen to Me, but I have said this on account of and for the benefit of the people standing around, so that they may believe that You did send Me [that You have made Me Your Messenger].” And then He shouted, “Lazarus, Come forth.”
“44And out walked the man who had been dead, his hands and feet wrapped in burial cloths (linen strips), and with a [burial] napkin bound around his face. Jesus said to them, Free him of the burial wrappings and let him go.
45Upon seeing what Jesus had done, many of the Jews who had come with Mary believed in Him.”
The Lord is taking us from glory to glory. He is resurrecting us into a new mind and way of thinking. He is loosing us from our formal burial cloth of religious thinking and ideology. He is raising us up into newness of life.
On this journey we sometime must relinquish the old so that we can embrace the new. The worse thing we can do is to believe things are as they have always been. This is what religion does. It builds its city on a truth, but becomes so cemented in it that it can never move on in the continual unfolding of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Some of you need a spiritual healing where there has been disappointment, hurt and maybe even anger against God. God still loves you more than you can know. Even when you don’t understand His hand, trust His heart. Sometimes it is these seeming failures that really lead us into the greater glory, even as it was with Mary and Martha. Hold fast you faith. He will never leave you or forsake you.
Blessings,
kent
Chosen
August 30, 2012
Ephesians 1:11
In him (Christ) we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,
Your life is not an accident or mistake. It is not designed to wander aimlessly if you are in Christ. In Christ, you were chosen, you were commissioned, purposed and destined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will. That may not look like any thing the we have imagined, but as you walk in faith and obedience to whose you are, you can trust that He has our steps ordered.
We are no longer our own. We were bought with the price of His blood. It is no longer us who has right to live, but rather Christ in us. He identified us with Him and Him with us as He died upon that cross. When He died, we died. When that man who became sin for us was buried; we were buried. When He arose in resurrection life, the same Spirit that rose Christ from that grave dwells in and raised us up also in a recreated newness of life no longer after the flesh, but after the Spirit. We received His LIFE, His DNA, His indwelling Spirit. When He arose, we ascended in Him, because where the head goes the body follows. Ephesians 1:18-23 Paul imparts this revelation to us, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 20which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
We have a power in us like the working of His (God’s) mighty strength, the same strength that raised Christ up and seated Him far above all rule and authority, power and dominion and every title that can be given, not only in this age, but the ages to come.
Guess who is right there in Him who God has placed all things under His feet. Does that not speak to the body, which we are? “He is the head over His church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Excuse me, but didn’t Paul just say that we, Christ’s church, His body is the FULLNESS OF HIM who fills everything in every way?
Paul goes in Ephesians 2 to talk about what we formerly were, but says in verses 4-7, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
God wants us to get a hold of something today. If you want to press in to know and be all that Christ has called you to know and be then you need to know “Who you are, Where you are and What you are for.” Identity, position and purpose. These are the three principles God gave me when I asked Him how we can operate out of the third heaven.
Most of us have a very understated revelation of who we are in Christ. God didn’t just chose you out of a drawing from a hat, you we were born for this day, this time and this season. You were born to be an even fuller expression in the age to come, but don’t allow that to negate the impact your life is to have today, in this season. There is nothing or no one that can limit you, but God Himself. You are in Christ. You are seated with Him in heavenly places. You were chosen by Him and for Him, to be the expression of Him.
B e the violent person who presses in and takes the kingdom by force; exercising faith, confidence and the mind of the Spirit to possess and exercise all that Father has for us. You are a world changer, a destiny maker; all things are beneath your feet, because you are in Christ. Now, let us be the expression of who we are.
Blessings,
kent
Resurrection Life
July 26, 2012
John 11:25
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
Resurrection means a rising up as from a seat. In this scripture Jesus communicates to Martha that the resurrection isn’t just an event for a future date in history. Resurrection is the Spirit of Life and it is resident in the person of Jesus Christ. Romans 8:1-2 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Those who are in Christ Jesus walking according to the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus, are walking also in the principle of resurrection life. The other part of that is that we are no longer walking in the principles and laws of sin and death. As faith is the inverse of fear and unbelief, so resurrection life is the inverse of death. It is that which rises up and unseats death. We see this truth in Romans 8:10-11,
“And if Christ [be] in you, the body [is] dead because of sin; but the Spirit [is] life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
Even now are we experiencing resurrection life in us as we are being transformed from death to life in Christ Jesus. There is a spiritual principle of life at work in us that is powerful and life giving. It is greater than death itself. Death obviously is still having it’s time and place even among the most spiritual of men, but under the direction of the Almighty even the powerful enemy of death must bow to the resurrection life of Christ. Even death could not hold Him in the grave. The destiny of our walk is to know death to that man of sin in our former nature. That death to self is bringing us into the resurrection life of Christ Jesus. Hebrews 2:14 says, “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.” We see then that power of death is held in the devil’s hands. Jesus dealt satan a deathblow at the cross through His death. What we must grasp is through that principle of death to sin and self there arises the Spirit of Life. The crushed grapes yield the wine. The seed that is planted and dies, gives way to the life within in it. What Christ has done as the head, He will accomplish through the body. In Philippians 3:10-11 the apostle Paul declares, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead (or more literally, “out of the dead”).” Christ is at work in us today to deliver us out of the power of sin and death that still is at work in our mortal bodies. He is the Life Force within us. The fellowship with His sufferings and the identification with His death are made more and more real to us the closer we walk with Him. But the death that works in us is giving place to life, His resurrection life that is also at work in us. It has the power to quicken and give life even to our mortal bodies. We see it in a measure now, but soon without measure in those who are the partakers of the first resurrection. In that first resurrection are those who rule and reign in Christ. Revelations 20:6 says, “Blessed and holy [is] he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.” As Paul goes on to say in Philippians 3:12-14, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but [this] one thing [I do], forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Pursue and lay hold of His Resurrection Life.
Blessings,
Kent
tricklesoftruth 