Robbed of Our Blessing

Haggai 2:10-14
On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Haggai: 11 “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Ask the priests what the law says: 12 If a person carries consecrated meat in the fold of his garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, oil or other food, does it become consecrated?’ ”
The priests answered, “No.”
13 Then Haggai said, “If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?”
“Yes,” the priests replied, “it becomes defiled.”
14 Then Haggai said, ” ‘So it is with this people and this nation in my sight,’ declares the LORD. ‘Whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled.

Robbed of Our Blessing

This is a day when the Lord desires to lay the spiritual foundations of His Temple again. What the Lord speaks to Haggai here He is speaking to us. In the analogy that Haggai brings forth, if a priest carried meat that had been sanctified and consecrated to the Lord in their pocket or the fold of the garment and touched another substance of food it didn’t automatically sanctify and consecrate that food. On the other hand if someone had handled or touched a dead body that defilement was transferred to all that he touched. The Lord says this people, His people, have been like those who have touched the dead body and so what ever they offer becomes defiled.
Are we wondering why we aren’t blessed, coming up short in our finances and experiencing so many struggles that we may not need too? The Lord says it is because we are defiled in our giving and our living.
We have talked about how the body of the old man is dead and crucified with Christ and we are a new creation in Christ, but when we fail to lay hold and live out of this reality and truth we are in affect touching the dead body. We are living out of corrupted fleshly thinking and attitudes. Thus what we touch becomes defiled because it is not the mind of Christ we are operating out of, it is the mind of the flesh, the old man, that which is supposed to be dead.
If God is to bless the works of our hands they have to be the works of His Spirit through us and not our fleshly efforts any more. When we lay the foundations of the Lord’s house, it is a spiritual house not built with human efforts and thinking, but directed and ordered by the Spirit.
We all want the God’s blessing and favor to rest upon us and it is in God’s heart to want to bless and increase us, but there are things we need to get rid of and the primary one is the mentality of this old dead man. We speak often concerning our identification with Christ because His is the life and the mind that we are being renewed and brought forth in day by day as we walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh. Romans 8:5-10 says, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; 7the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. 9You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” It is easy to see from this scripture how much we may still be living out of that old man and nature mentality. The Lord says that this is a defilement and pollution of the life He wants to live through us and the works that He wants to accomplish with our hands. We must begin to truly put on the mind of Christ and view our world through God’s eyes and perspective. In doing so we will be blessed. It is imperative that we identify the thinking that is filled with doubt, fear and unbelief and turn that around to agree and line up with the Word of God. Anything less is sin. Allow Christ to be at the forefront of your motives, your intentions, your will and your purpose. Filter your world and all that you are dealing with through Him. Ask Him and trust Him for wisdom and direction in all of your ways. We are a people that are putting away that which is dead and walking in the consecrated and sanctified life that we carry within us. Walk in the Spirit, build the Lord’s house and live in His blessing. If you will come and build the Lord’s house by the Spirit, He will build yours.

Blessings,
#kent

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When We Doubt

When We Doubt

 

Colossians 2:8

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

When We Doubt

There is a thief the comes to steal,

The identity he says that is not real.

He brings with him doubt, fear and unbelief,

He comes to rob my faith because he is a thief.

What if all my faith is in vain?

Then I can hold on to all my guilt and shame.

What if this message of the cross is just a lie?

Then wretched and most miserable of men am I.

Let me return to the sin and death from which I came,

Let me forsake life and hope if God’s Word is just a game.

Let me return to when my heart was perverted and my walk was lame,

If all roads lead to God, then Jesus why did you come to die in vain?

The Jews passed down the account of all the works that God had done.

They did this so they would not forget all the battles by Him they won.

Take some time to recount all of your blessings, one by one.

You will be find yourself amazed at what the Lord has done.

Intellects want to rob your faith through philosophical clatter,

But what you know in your heart is really what does matter.

What you know to be real in your heart, let no man steal,

Christ in you, redeemed by the blood, that is what is real.

Satan and man can throw up all kinds of smoke and mirrors,

But in the end it is the power of Christ that removes all doubt and fears.

If you embrace the lie it is to your shame,

You’ve been stripped of the truth of why Christ came.

There remains no other sacrifice to take away your sin,

You’ve been robbed of life and power that is only found in Him.

Beware of your reasoning that tells you that Christ is a fairytale,

Lest in that time when all hope is lost, your heart will begin to fail.

If Christ be a lie I will still embrace Him until the end,

Because I have experienced His love and know Him as my friend.

No, I don’t understand the mystery of all of His ways,

But I believe when He calls me up, in Him I will be raised.

So you go ahead and embrace the lie if you will.

But I choose to embrace my Savior still.

I have identified with Him, and so I am no longer my own,

I am becoming flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone.

I will not let fear, doubt and unbelief rob me of the identity that is mine.

In Him my life is hid and out of His righteousness my life will shine.

I know who I am and I will not let anyone take that from me.

For in Christ I live and through His blood I have found my liberty.

Poor indeed is the man that let his faith be robbed,

In the day of judgement bitter tears he will sob.

Stand your ground and hold fast the truth proclaimed,

When faith has stood the test, His promises you will claim.

Kent Stuck

 

Blessings,

kent

Christ in You

Colossians 1:25-27
I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. 27To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Christ in You

There are many powerful truths that are imparted to us through the Word of God. Perhaps the greatest truth aside from knowing Christ as my personal Savior and being filled with the Holy Spirit is the truth that I am sharing with you today. When we get a revelation of what Paul calls the glorious riches of a hidden mystery then we are empowered, because now we are no longer orphans. We know who our true Daddy is and we now know our true identity. That identity is no longer associated with the weak man of the flesh that I was born of in the natural. It is identified in knowing that I am a son of God. Papa’s DNA is now in me, because Christ is in me. When I really lay hold of that and begin to live my life in the light of that truth I realize I am not my own, I am His. It is as Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” That former me died back when I ask Christ into my heart and Christ entered into me to give me my new identity in Him.
Oh, how the enemy wants to rob that truth and revelation from us. If he can confuse or hide from you who you really are then he can perpetrate his lies into you about who you really aren’t. If you don’t know your identity he is more than happy to give you his. That is why so many of us live defeated, discouraged, condemned and robbed of our joy, strength and power.
Does anyone reading this ever feel so unworthy, like a failure and separated in their relationship with God. It is because you are allowing your identity to be taken from you. Your identity is not in your feelings and it is not even in your own righteousness, it is in the Righteous One who died for you. He took our sins and imparted into us His righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Romans 3:21-24 speaks to this, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” We have such a hard time releasing our old identity because that is exactly where the enemy wants to keep us living. In that old identity he can put us again under the law of sin and death, instead of the liberty we can find in the law of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus.
Jesus speak to it this way when He is praying to the Father in John 17:20-23, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Jesus places us in the same context of relationship with Him as He is in with the Father. That is a powerful insight into how He now sees you and receives you. You are no longer a foreigner, an outsider, but an heir and joint- heir with Him. We are family! Your family doesn’t love you because you’re perfect they love you because you are a part of them. When we realize that we are family, that we are flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone, then we can get a real revelation of the calling that is upon our lives because of who we truly are. Life is no longer about pleasing me, it is about pleasing my father because I have that Christ nature in me.
What did Jesus come to do?
John 14:31 says, “but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” That is the mandate of a son; to do the will of the Father. We know that we don’t have that within our former self, but we do have it because of who we now are in Christ and because the nature of Christ is being formed in us.
1 John 3:1-3 affirms that identity, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.” 1 John 2:3-6 exhorts us with this, “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 4The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” Because you have born again in His nature you will live in His truth. If you are struggling with this then look at where you identity is at and get it in alignment with who God says you are and what He has called you to be.
“Christ in you, the hope of glory!”

Blessings,
kent