Posted: 08/22/2008 at 12:19pm | IP Logged

GOD HAS AN AGENDA AND YOU ARE PART OF IT

Attainment to the level of maturity God intends is planned to be developed through the interaction of the Holy Spirit gifted and anointed and empowered ministries – who are the ordinary men and women – not the professionals - working together in the Body of Christ with Holy Spirit. It is the means provided by God himself to produce in the Body what is nothing less than Jesus Christ himself being duplicated and multiplied in all the Body. Nothing less. Righteous with his righteousness. Holy with his holiness. Perfect with his perfection. Holy minds. Restored bodies. Holy boldness to the point of violence – and the power of the Resident Creator of Betelgeuse enabling it all to happen. It is the violent who are taking the Kingdom by force. Nothing less is going to release the conditions that will bring about the manifestation and function of the Kingdom.

If we are going to become involved in getting this planet back into the hands of God Almighty – each of us attaining to that measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ is where we start.  

The situation is nicely summed up in 2 Corinthians 4.  “All of us are constantly being transfigured into Christ’s very own image in ever increasing splendour and from one degree of glory to another – for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

There is more.

I have said all this before, but I’m reminding you that your body is the temple and dwelling and work base of Holy Spirit. This is the same Holy Spirit who released the power of “The Word” that produced Betelgeuse – and who brooded over this planet getting it ready for the re-construction. Holy Spirit covered this whole planet. He has been referred to as the Managing Director of the Godhead. He has been called the Power of the Godhead.

It was Holy Spirit who brought Jesus back to life after that profound death Jesus had accomplished. This was far more than simply bringing a Jairus’s daughter or a Lazarus back to life. Jesus had absorbed the whole of death into himself. Death died when he died. To bring him back from THAT amounted to the abolition of the power of death. That Being – THAT Holy Spirit - with that power - is living inside you. This is so awesome. If someone could just believe it how different things would be.

You know that when Jesus died – you died. That is basic gospel doctrine. You are alive, but it is not you. It is Christ who lives in you. THE LIFE YOU NOW LIVE IN THIS FLESH IS JESUS LIVING HIS LIFE IN YOU. This is the Person described in those verses we looked at in the beginning of Colossians and Hebrews. This is the Creator of all Creation. THIS IS THE PERSON WHO IS THE LIFE YOU ARE NOW LIVING - here and now in your own person and being. This is the Jesus, who, in factual reality  is the very life you are now living in this flesh. His heart, his mind, his life, his hopes and dreams, his attitudes and inclinations, his fixed and determined purposes – all living and alive in you – right now. Get to KNOW it. It will change you and everything around you.

But there is more.

If you are real with God, Paul’s prayer in Eph 3 is real for you.

Discovering these few verses in the Amplified New Testament was a major turning point in my life. It was during the first Billy Graham Crusade in Australia in 1957. I was involved in the Landline Hook-up in our area – that relayed the main Sunday afternoon Crusade service being held in the State capital city to country towns all over the State by phone line to a public hall or other facility.

I lived in Queensland and I was down in Brisbane, the State capital, to attend a meeting of the regional leaders. While there, I went into a Christian book store, and a whole display unit was given over to rows of yellow jacketed books with a big sign “Billy Graham Recommends” – so it had to be good. It was the first arrival of the Amplified New Testament.

I had recently been digging into Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3, so I opened this new translation to that passage to check what the translators had done with it. And as I began to read, I started to bawl right there in the book shop.

That you may really come to know, practically, through experience for yourselves, the love of Christ which far surpasses mere knowledge without experience: -

OK – I was already starting to blubber. My heart was so aching for reality in my involvement with God – then ---

That you may be filled through all your being unto all the fullness of God  - that you may have the richest measure of the Divine Presence and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God.

And  now I was really crying and I said out loud right there in the book shop “I KNEW there had to be something like this.”

THEN – Now to Him Who by, in consequence of the action of His power that is at work in us,

THEN - is able to carry out his purpose and do superabundantly, far over and above all we dare ask or think, infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes or dreams –

To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen – so be it.

I was ruined – utterly wrecked - from that point. Never again could I tolerate the mealy mouth, wishy-washy gutless religious platitudes I had lived with all my life.

Please take this seriously. You just plain CAN’T screw around in religious fairy floss / cotton candy any more. Our involvement with God is of eternal consequence – but in our here and now – to waste our days on anything less than the fullness of Father’s desires for us – is not only stupid, it’s criminal.

Read all Ephesians 3. In fact – read chapters 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 – in fact, read the whole letter - in the Amplified New Testament - until it gets hold of you. IT’S DYNAMITE. This is what Father is bringing to development in your life so he can fulfil his ultimate plans in and through you. (And I’m not telling you to learn Bible verses – I’m telling you to get on your face before God Almighty.) I don’t know anyone who believes any of this – but here it is. This is God Almighty presenting his intentions for you – YES YOU - and the action of his power is at work in you making it happen. Will someone get off their big fat pew and start believing it. There is work to be done.

I want to emphasise the statement in verse 20 - “In consequence of the action of His power that is at work in us”. Do you realise that Father God has been trying to produce this development in you, ever since you were joined to his family?

DO NOT ignore those thoughts and promptings and warnings and instructions that are at work in us continually – but which we are able to so easily squelch as the result of much practice. Our growth into what follows that phrase depends on our submission to it – enabling him to “carry out his purpose in us”. That is the whole point of our existence in this phase of our life.

Father God. Lord God Most High. God Almighty has made his home in you. He lives in you. The life of Holy Spirit, and of Jesus and of Father God, is so blended and fused together with your life, there is no distinguishable difference.

It is like a cup of coffee. Water, coffee, sugar, cream are all blended together into being a cup of coffee. It would be hard to separate the components. That is how it is with God and us. Indivisible. Inseparateable.

There is more.

The NAME OF JESUS – (refer back to the consequence of his promotion) - before which every knee MUST bow – and the power and authority of that name – has been given to us to use. It has been said that gives us “power of attorney”. The right to sign cheques and contracts and make decrees.

But there is more.

In the OT, Father told his people his thoughts and his ways were so far above their thoughts and ways – they could never know him or what he was doing. In our day – WE HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST. What is more – we are jointly seated with him in the decision making, strategy planning council room of Heaven. What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither could we ever understand - we have had revealed to us. No more excuse. We know what God is doing.

It has been God’s plan from the beginning that his creature man would develop into that level of relationship with himself, so that he WOULD know what God knew. What Jesus completely completed on the cross has brought us back to that place. We DO have the mind of Christ.

We are not to be messed with.

As being the representation of God Almighty on this planet, we walk like God, we talk like God, we look like God, we achieve like God. Those watching us cannot tell where we end and where God starts. We are a union of life with God Almighty, with Father and Jesus and Holy Spirit filling and flooding every particle of our being. NO LIMITS AND NO RESTRICTIONS.  

And – THAT is the man or woman who is going to see the Kingdom come, and God’s will done on Planet Earth.  

I have been talking about our relationship with God. It goes way past that.

It is our absolute union and identification with God Almighty. Regardless of what position and recognition you were able to attain in church – the very real foundational basis for anything to do with God – is you and God being a union of life with each other – one on one.

This is so vital. This calls for the time you would normally give to activities that aren’t all that consequential – to be given to companionship with God. Intimacy with God himself - at home – alone with God - is the foundation for everything that happens when you get to the church meeting. It is that one on one contact where the union and identification is developed. And that development is what brings us to Father’s original intention. And when several folk get together who have grown into that level of union of life with God – something is going to bust loose.

There is a tangible force at work. When you connect together live and compatible electronic or electrical or chemical or mechanical components, an action occurs. A resonance – a harmonizing – happens. It is that resonance, that harmony,  that blending together of precision tuned forces, that makes things work. A modern motor vehicle is a good example of all these components co-operating in harmony.

And when God Almighty is the one who assembles and tunes that arrangement of men and women who have allowed Holy Spirit to mature them into becoming duplicate-of-Jesus components - you are going to know that things will never be the same again.

That is what I am talking about.