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KINGDOM/APOSTOLIC Transformation & Reformation ARTICLES & Discussion
OpenHeaven.com Forum : KINGDOM/APOSTOLIC Transformation & Reformation ARTICLES & Discussion
Subject Topic: EVERLASTING LIFE EXPERIENCE Post Reply Post New Topic
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Ron McGatlin
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Joined: 08/23/2004
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Posts: 4141
Posted: 06/03/2010 at 2:18pm | IP Logged Quote Ron McGatlin

Everlasting Life Experience

By Ron McGatlin

Life involves much more than conscious existence. There is an experience of spiritual everlasting life that is above and beyond natural life. Also, there is a natural life or existence apart from God that is empty and more like living death.

There is an awakening of everlasting life coming to many secular and religious people including Christians. People who have been trained to seek knowledge of life and yet have not walked in the experience of everlasting life are awakening to a potential of an inner quality of life of God that is above and beyond natural existence and religious living.

Man’s knowledge applied through human initiative can accomplish many impressive works. However, without God those marvelous works will never lead to everlasting life experience, but they will lead toward an existence that is void of real life.

The knowledge of godliness without the experience of it in life is empty and vain, like puffed up dry clouds of no value or usefulness (1 Cor 8:1) (Jude 1:12). Knowledge alone can do nothing constructive until it is made alive in life experience. Knowing the Bible word without the Spirit’s appropriation of it into the life is powerlessness.

Intimately knowing the WORD, Christ Jesus, who abides within His people, is the source of the abundant kingdom of heaven life that is above and beyond natural life.

Knowledge without Spirit leads to hypocrisy.

Without the power of the Spirit revealing and appropriating the knowledge from God, people are set up for fear and guilt. They fear not measuring up to biblical standards and feel guilty when they do not measure up.

This often leads to employing human strength and discipline in an attempt to achieve Christ-like standards in life. The goal of the full stature of Christ in our lives is always somewhere ahead out of our reach (Eph 4:13). We are driven to live a lifetime of repenting and seeking but never quite getting there. Striving and self-sacrificing leads to the development of systems of religious rules and practices for justification and penitence.

If we do a reasonably good job of self-sacrificing and doing religious things, it often leads to religious pride and arrogance covered by a façade of false humility and fake smiles. We religiously attempt to ACT like Christ Jesus and strive to become like Him. We become actors playing a role of acting like Christians.

Becoming truly humble by the power of the indwelling Spirit of Christ pleases God. Acting humble through self-abasement is false humility and pleases the devil.

Religion becomes a very strong force driven by a carnal state of mind seeking self-justification.  Religion satisfies our need to do something to try to justify ourselves. Religious people love their religion, because it is their source of hope to become free from a life of carnal-minded death.

Other streams of secularism and “new age” type religions have taken another approach to accomplishing self-justification. This approach consists of lowering the standard of godliness so low that there is nothing lacking to be or to do. There is no sin awareness, no demons, and no standards or judgments. Therefore, there is no need for justification.

Kingdom Transformation

We have reached a pivotal point in the history of God and man - a time of turning away from the “tree of knowledge” and turning back to the “tree of life.”

There is a maturation of the work of Christ with His people that has grown through the generations. It is a graduation time, if you please – a time of graduating from self-focused, man-driven religion to Spirit-led and Spirit-empowered abundant everlasting life.

People of God are maturing and graduating from going to church to being the church – from trying to be like Christ to the life of Christ within by the Spirit – from knowledge without experience to intimately knowing Christ Jesus and experiencing the life of His power and love by His Spirit.

We are moving from only waiting for Christ Jesus to someday be with us again to seeing the reality that since Pentecost He has been available to indwell His people with all the power needed to transform us and change the world with His life (Rom 5:10). The power to overcome the devil and destroy his work in the world is available in the Spirit and awaits a people to abandon religious and secular false beliefs and receive the fullness of the powerful Spirit of Christ Jesus to fully live in our bodies. Thus we collectively, truly become the Body of Christ in the world.

This is the PROMISE OF THE FATHER through Christ Jesus.

Acts 1:4-5:  And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, "which," He said, "you have heard from Me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."

Acts 1:8:  "But you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."

  • The power to love God and our neighbor is in the abiding with Christ Jesus by the Spirit.
  • The power to overcome sin and destroy the works of the enemy is IN THE PRESENSE OF GOD WITH US IN THE SPIRIT.
  • The power to experience everlasting life of the righteousness of God is in the presence of the Spirit of Christ Jesus.
  • The power to live in joy and peace at all times is in the presence of the Spirit of Christ in us.
  • All the power needed to fulfill all the word and works of God is now available to all who are saturated in the Holy Spirit of God.

We in Christ and Christ in Us

The actual resurrection life of Christ Jesus is available to abide in His people by the Holy Spirit of God. Jesus said the Father is in Him, and He is in us by the Holy Spirit. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one. We now have the potential to become one with God.

John 14:18-20:  "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. 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.

John 17:23  "I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

When Christ left heaven and came to earth, He did not become like man. He became the Son of man. Though He became a man, He was still God.

When we are in Christ and He is in us by the Spirit, we do not become like Christ. We become a body in which Christ abides and moves upon the earth. We become sons of God but are still man (Rom 8:14-19) (Gal 3:26).

Collectively, as the body of Christ, we have the potential to become fully redeemed man in whom the Spirit of Christ sits upon the throne and rules and reigns on earth while still seated at the right hand of Father’s throne (1 Cor 3:16) (2 Tim 2:12) (Rom 5:17) (Rev 5:10).

For more on the sons of God see Kingdom Growth Guide (#050).

For more on Christ in the Spirit see Overcoming Life On A Small Planet - Chapter 8, Entering the Kingdom.

Keep on pursuing love. It never fails
and His kingdom never ends.

Ron McGatlin

archive.openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net



Edited by Moderator on 06/03/2010 at 9:00pm
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