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Topic: Who Are You? By Lloyd Ellefson
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Author
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Mandy Gay
Senior Member
Joined: 07/18/2008
Location: United Kingdom
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1227
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Posted: 05/16/2013 at 9:24am
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Who Are You?
By Lloyd Ellefson
I would like to share some thoughts with you on our
consciousness of being, commonly described as the self,
the I, or the ego. Some questions that often come to us
are: Who are we? Where did we come from? Who is Jesus,
and how does He relate to us? What will happen to us
after we die? What can effect a change in us?
Everything in the seed of God is programmed by God. As
far as we are concerned, we may think that the things we
do have been initiated and worked out by us, yet as we
grow up we see that it is not our work, but a progression
of God's work in us.
Colossians 2:11, "And in Him you were also circumcised
with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of
the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ."
This cannot be taken literally; it has nothing to do with
our physical flesh. It is an identification with Christ.
"Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you
were also raised up with Him through faith in the working
of God, who raised Him from the dead." (v.12) We have to
identify with the working of God in Christ, for this is
how He works in us. We were baptized into Christ; we were
crucified with Him, buried with Him, and have been raised
up with Him. This has come about through faith in the
working of God - for it was He who raised Him from the
dead. God raised Christ and He raised us. We must see our
identification with Him. If we cannot identify with
Christ in every area, the area in which we do not
identify with Him will separate us from Him. There has to
be a total oneness with Christ before we can exercise,
manifest or realize oneness with God the Father.
"And when you were dead in your transgressions and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together
with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions."
(v.13) He has actually forgiven us all our trespasses!
Then Paul goes on to say, "Having cancelled out the
certificate of debt (handwriting of ordinances)..." Those
ordinances obviously referred to the law Moses got at
Sinai. From the beginning it was God's purpose that these
ordinances should be cancelled out in Christ. Everything
God did in the natural foreshadowed a principle of
reality and life that is unchanging. God is taking us out
of our delusions and giving us reality! The deliverance
from our carnal mind, our natural thinking, and our
identification with death and darkness, etc., is the
birthing process we are presently experiencing.
"...consisting of decrees against us and which was
hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having
nailed it to the cross." (v.14). We did not understand
the meaning of this before we became children of God. God
says that we came out of Him and that we are His
children. Becoming children of God requires a birthing
and deliverance from the law, for it is contrary to us
and constantly produces the knowledge of sin.
Regeneration comes through Jesus Christ; He causes us to
emerge from the womb of death and darkness. We are
birthed into an illumination or light which gives us a
new sense of being of ourselves, of God and others.
This thought is also expressed in Eph. 2:1ff. "But you
who were dead in trespasses and sins." If we believe that
we were truly dead (in darkness and in ignorance) because
of the working of sin, we will realize our total
helplessness and inability to come back to God of our own
volition. God has to do something within us before we can
come back to Him. The regeneration of our spirit being
has to take place. Since God is spirit, that which He
does within us is in the spiritual realm.
"In which you formerly walked according to the course of
this world." Christ's kingdom is not of this world. In
our first or natural idea of who we were, we walked
according to the course of this world. After we underwent
a change, we walked according to the course of the
kingdom of God. What is our part in bringing about this
change? Since we are dead in our trespasses and sins, we
are unable to contribute anything - we can only be led,
either by our Father God, or by our father the devil -
depending upon who our father is. Our sense of being
depends upon the consciousness we walk in.
"...according to the prince of the power of the air, of
the spirit that is now working in the sons of
disobedience." (v.2) The prince of the power of the air
is a spirit, and it works in the children of
disobedience! It is darkness and it is operating in
children who are disobeying God; they are disobeying the
true spirit of power, righteousness and truth.
I'd like to explain how this works. We have to understand
that we are not entities in ourselves. Paul quoted the
Old Testament in Romans 3:10-18 saying, "There is none
who seeks after God...all have turned aside...there is no
one who does good...with their tongues they keep
deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips; whose
mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." No man seeks
after God! Nobody even wants to. In our natural state, we
are full of our own concepts; we are deceived and we
deceive others. God did not make man sin, but He
subjected him to vanity. His ego or sense of self made
him vulnerable to believe a lie - a word which was not
from God; it was another word - a word of disobedience.
On one occasion Jesus said that only God is good. By this
He seemed to indicate that He was not God. He said, "I
can do nothing of Myself...My doctrine is not Mine, but
His that sent Me." His teaching and beliefs were
manifested in His testimony by words and works. He
demonstrated the entirety of God and the nothingness of
humanity or human identity. God sent Him to bring us an
understanding of both the human and the divine
consciousness of being, in order to bring us into the
light and truth of God. Our worth does not depend upon
who we are in ourselves - our worth is in our
participation in the Christ. Our oneness with the Father
is in Christ. When Jesus said, "I and the Father are
one", He was participating in the consciousness of God.
So we too have to live in His consciousness.
Many people are afraid of the word "consciousness"; for
some reason they think it is bad. Consciousness is
actually an awareness of what is happening around us and
the totality of our thoughts, feelings and impressions.
When we are born we don't reallly have an awareness of
knowledge and recognition. For example, babies cry when
they are thirsty and uncomfortable even though they are
unable to identify the problem. But as they grow up they
begin to have an identity. They begin to call themselves
by their name. In the natural, we live in our
identification as an "I". Furthermore, we think this I,
this me, has a free will. We think we can do our own
thing, but this is not scriptural - neither did Christ
demonstrate that.
Christ came as the most submissive person there ever was;
He recognized the helplessness of His humanity and
therefore was completely dependent upon God! He fully
allowed the Spirit of God to fill His consciousness with
the things that came from God. For this reason He could
call God His Father; God was fathering the conception of
the spiritual words in Christ. This caused Him to be an
obedient Son. His obedience undid natural man's obedience
to his own ideas.
When people begin to feel the remorse of sin, they may
want to find God, repent, feel better, or whatever. So
they apologize to God. This is a natural experience; the
soulish man cannot find any real meaning in spiritual
things. Since man first comes to God as a soulish man,
whatever he experiences is still in the soulish realm.
These human experiences become a part of his previous
consciousness. When a person wants to surrender himself
to God, he comes as a natural man who has no conception
of spiritual things - yet He wants to operate in the
concepts of God. The Spirit has to change man's concept
of God, otherwise man will continue in his former
concepts.
We know that Israel's concept of God was formed by its
own mind. This was a false concept, for when Jesus came,
Israel rejected and crucified the concept of God that was
operating in Jesus Christ. This demonstrates that our old
conception of God has to change, for our minds receive
words from our own perspective and from our sense of
being in regard to God, the world, people, and ourselves.
If that is the extent of our understanding, we fall short
of the revelation given by the Spirit. So when someone
comes to Christ and is converted, his concept of God
still has to be transformed. He has to know who God is
through Jesus Christ who is the exact representation of
God; He is the consciousness of God. The Holy Spirit
brings this consciousness to us. Unless our understanding
of God is changed, we will operate in the same
understanding that Israel had.
The natural concept of God rejects the spiritual concept
of God that is in Jesus Christ. The flesh always remains
contrary to the Spirit, so when someone begins to reveal
the true conception of God in Christ, people will reject
that person. To the natural man the things of the Spirit
are meaningless - they have no real foundation in his
life. Our own concepts were our consciousness of God; our
consciousness of being was our God; our consciousness of
understanding and knowledge was our God. After we receive
the Holy Spirit and grow up, our concepts of God begin to
change. As we think and meditate on this, we find that
without consciousness we don't have anything.
Our natural consciousness is opposed to the spiritual
realization of God. To come into a spiritual
consciousness of God, we have to receive true revelation
of who God really is. True revelation of God does away
with the old. We have to operate in, and bear testimony
of who our God truly is! If our consciousness of God is
brought to us by Christ, then that is our life. If our
consciousness of God has not come from Christ, we only
have the consciousness of death, mortality, temporal
living, and flesh.
As we grow, we begin to see things in greater depth. We
used to categorize people as good, bad and very bad. Now
we find out that all humanity is under sin, but it is
expressed individually. In the same way, the truth of God
has always been truth and will always remain truth
everywhere, and it was expressed in Jesus Christ. He was
the seed of truth that God sent. Since God is everywhere,
truth is everywhere, but it is expressed individually by
His people. As more and more people express and manifest
truth by being obedient to God, truth is enlarged through
a multitude of people. This is the fulfillment of who the
Christ is - "which is His body, the fulness of Him who
fills all in all." (Eph. 1:23) It is the Christ who fills
all in all.
Then we have the sin question. What is sin, where does it
come from, and how can we be freed from it? Jesus Christ
was sent to redeem those who were under the law. No one
is justified by circumcision and by trying to keep the
law - for he is unable to do so. It only brings
transgression of the law; sin is the transgression of the
law. Paul said, "Through the letter and circumcision you
transgress the law." Yet they thought they were getting
better by fulfilling the law, by keeping the letter of
the law and by practicing circumcision. However, Paul
emphasized that this brought transgression of the law.
Actually, the law was added because of transgression!
(Gal. 3:19) What was it added to? It was added to man's
consciousness, because the knowledge of sin came through
the law. Before that man was oblivious to what sin was.
Sin was bringing him to death; he was dying and he didn't
know why.
Man was not the originator of sin. Sin came into the
world through a man, and sin is the transgression of the
law. Where does that put you and me? It makes us pawns of
disobedience, of flesh, darkness and evil; through the
power of sin (which does not have power in itself, but
its strength is in the law) we work to fulfill the
desires of this adversary of God. Sin comes to us as a
powerful delusion; it fills our conscience. Man is a
transgressor of the law. That is why we have to be
delivered from it, and be put into the spirit of
obedience in Jesus Christ.
Christians are people who have experienced a change of
consciousness. Two powers have been operating in us. Both
of them are greater than we, and have more authority over
us than our own will has. We may call our will a free
will, but it isn't free; we thought that if we didn't
want to be delivered, we could just go ahead and keep on
doing what we were doing. However, the law brought the
knowledge of sin, and humanity began to see that
disobedience to God was sin and it was bringing death!
When man's heart is changed through the words of Christ,
he will follow Christ in repentance and baptism. He will
receive the Holy Spirit, and hear a voice from heaven
say, "This is My son in whom I am well pleased."
Man manifests sin in his original identity and vanity,
even though he is not the originator of sin and has not
participated in the original seed of sin. Once we are
freed from the idea that man is the originator of sin, we
see that in Christ there is no contamination of sin and
no consciousness of sin. I believe Jesus Christ has come
to bring us into this understanding. Since there is no
condemnation in Him, He obviously doesn't have any sin to
contend with. If we would have this mind, we would begin
to think like He does. Sin was induced in man by a word
that was not of God. When we hear a word that is not of
God and obey that word, we are operating in disobedience
to God.
Everything came into being by the word of God! Through
our natural senses we observe nature and even understand
that God made it. However, when we see things man has
made, we rarely think of the original substances of which
they are made, and that they are there because of the
word of God. For example, when we look at a wooden table,
we only think of it is a wooden table. Yet it was made
from a tree that was created by God. Had God not supplied
the wherewithal for making things, man could not do what
he is doing. Everything is there because of the creative
word of God! It is difficult for us to fathom that God
supplied all the raw materials for everything we see in
the natural. It all came from God! The reality of
everything is what it is in God - not what it appears to
be in the natural. We are presently beginning to see the
allness of God - that He is everywhere and that He is the
source of all things. As long as we only perceive things
through our natural senses and our carnal mind, we do not
see the reality; we only see the natural manifestations.
We only recognize the reality when we become spiritually
quickened or awakened.
A prophecy quoted in Hebrews 8:10 reads, "...I will put
My laws into their minds, and I will write them upon
their hearts." Hearts! People pray, "Come into my heart
Lord Jesus." What does Jesus want to do in my evil heart,
for out of the heart proceeds all kinds of
lasciviousness, evil, fornications and every evil thing?
Why should we welcome Christ into that heart? In praying
that, we are really asking Christ to make us better. By
asking Him to come into our heart, we have to receive the
things of God without making any stipulations or
conditions. He can own every part of me, do anything He
wants to do, and be everything He wants to be in me. In
reality, God gives us a new heart! Eze. 36:26ff says, "I
will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within
you...and cause you to walk in My statutes...so you will
be My people and I will be your God...I will save you
from all your uncleanness..." In Jesus Christ we become a
new creation.
This law only works in the new creation man; in Him we
receive a new realm of realization. In Jer. 17:9 it says
that our old heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know
it? Out of the heart of man comes every kind of evil. "As
a man thinks in his heart, so is he." (Prov. 23:7) An
evil man will continually think evil thoughts because he
is evil. We are who God says we are. If God has cleansed
us from all our sins, we are clean! God wants us to
believe we are what He says we are! He tells us we are a
new creation in Christ, so that is what we are!
Now let's look at the mind of Christ. In John 3:14 Jesus
testified of Himself and said, "And as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of
Man be lifted up." What does that mean? Jesus Christ
identified with His humanity by calling Himself the Son
of Man. He also said, "I go to prepare a place for
you...that where I am you may be also." (Jn. 14:2b-3) The
prepared place was not where He was going, but where He
was in this world as a new man, a new image of God,
having a new concept or realization that is brought by
the Spirit. This is the Son of Man that is to be lifted
up! This new man is not visible to human eyes.
Moses was told to lift up the brass serpent in the
wilderness to save the people who were dying from the
poisonous bites of the serpents. Everyone who looked up
at the brass serpent would be delivered from the viper's
bite. Jesus said if the Son of Man is lifted up like
that, He will draw all men unto Himself. Most people
think Jesus died on the cross as their substitute. They
do not identify with Him; they do not see that they were
crucified with Him.
Spiritually we see that the great dragon, that is, the
adversary or satan, being put to death on the cross. That
means that the carnal mind's conception of God and of
itself, died there. That original seed of all sin,
transgression and death is put to death on that cross.
Man put the visible manifestation of the physical man
Jesus to death; the testimony of the Christ in Him was to
death. The Son of God did not die; I only see satan dying
there. There was a death TO sin through the Spirit of
Christ that was in the man Christ Jesus. The seed of
delusion that has been injected into man was aborted, so
it no longer reproduces itself. The death of Jesus on the
cross included more than the visible crucifixion. By
putting to death the original seed of all sin, it
established the law of life that is in the being of God.
Man can live now!
Nobody lived before Christ. He was the Firstborn of all
creation. The term, BEFORE CHRIST (B.C.) does not have
any spiritual significance; it is only the natural way of
referring to the time before Jesus was manifested in the
earth as a man. He WAS, before the man Abraham. I don't
think there was anything before Christ. Jesus was a Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world. A.D. is an
abbreviation of Anno Domini, Latin for IN THE YEAR OF OUR
LORD. However, we know the Lord was present prior to
that!
All thoughts and ideas are communicated through words,
but the human mind cannot grasp spiritual realities;
human concepts cannot accept spiritual realities. We live
and die through spiritual words. The death that was
symbolized by Adam, came through words, for God said that
the day they would eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil they would die. Life also comes through
words, for Jesus said, "My words are spirit and are
life." So we really die and live by words. Death, which
came by words, is destroyed by life, which came in the
Word of God.
The Word of God (as a seed) cannot conceive and reproduce
in the natural mind, because the natural mind is not pure
- it always commits adultery. But the spiritual mind of
Christ is as a virgin - it has never accepted another
seed. It reproduces the life that is in Christ Jesus, and
brings it forth in us. As this realization dawns on us,
we begin to see the greatness of what God in Christ Jesus
has done for us by taking us into His life!
A clearer realization of what it means to have Christ in
us helps us to understand this better. Christ cannot be
in the natural man or in an evil heart. When Paul said,
"Christ in you", the YOU he referred to is the new
creation man. This man has a realization beyond that
which comes to us in our natural senses. Even though we
continue to live in this body which is subject to cold
and heat, etc., we can rise up in faith and be
overcomers! We believe God will take care of us as long
as He wants us on the earth. He will supply us with what
we need to continue our testimony.
If we abide in the vine we will bear fruit, and this
fruit will remain! It remains - it does not come and go
like weeks, months and years. This fruit is simply the
consciousness of who we are - it is not something we try
to be. It will become evident in our lives and it will be
manifested in our thinking; it will also show in the way
we think of other people. The true sense of our being is
the Christ in us; it is a rest, it is what we are! It
becomes a motivation for our life. What a relief to know
that we don't have to strive to be something we aren't!
We don't have to strive to love people because we are
united to the Christ in us! (Hate seems to come naturally
without striving or learning it, therefore we often
identify with hate; but hate belongs to the Adamic man.)
We no longer have to strive to get people to give things
to us, to love us, to be like us, etc. Nor do we strive
to have power or control. There is a wonderful rest in
that! This is how we are affected by having Christ in us!
We are to present ourselves to God as those who are alive
from the dead. (Rom. 6:11,13) This is not what most
people do. They present themselves to God as sinners,
unclean, and in need. They get so distraught, and finally
cry out, "Good gracious, what's the use?" This is not
scriptural and it produces many problems.
Sin is the transgression of the law. So the one who
transgresses the law is the transgressor. Transgression
did not originate in us; something worked in us, causing
us to transgress. The only way we can rid ourselves of
thinking that we are the cause of our sin, is by getting
rid of our identification with that sin. We do not become
righteous just because we confess our sins. Confession
does not remove the nature or mind that conceives and
indulges in things which are wrong. We have to identify
with the righteousness that is in Christ Jesus. When we
agree with the scriptures, we will believe that we are
new creatures in Christ. We will begin to entertain the
conceptions that were in the mind of Christ Jesus. He
never presented Himself as a sinner because sin is a
transgression of the law. The law is the power that
causes us to sin. We are helpless in its grip. If we
think we have the authority or the free will in ourselves
to choose God or the devil and to do what we want, we are
operating in a delusion. Satan loves to have us believe
we have the ability to choose what is right, because he
instilled that thought in man. He operates in a delusion.
We have to present ourselves to God as those alive from
the dead. We have to be in this life before we can walk
in it.
Under the old law Jesus did not qualify for the
priesthood, for He was not of Levitical descent.
Therefore He did not have the legal right to the temple
proper even though He was the Son of God. He could only
be in the outer court. His ministry did not consist of
administering the law. He did not perform Old Testament
sacrifices and washings; nor did He observe religious
days. Although He fulfilled the law by beginning His
ministry at the age of thirty - thirty being the legal
age for entering the priesthood - and thus demonstrated
His identity with humanity, administering the law is not
the Christ. His only identification with sin was in
becoming a sin-offering for us.
Christ's mission was to minister an endless life
according to the order of Melchizedek. Receiving His life
brings us into a whole new sense of being. He takes away
the sin-consciousness, for it requires repentance with
all its accompanying sacrifices. We are neither satan nor
God, but we manifest whoever is working in us. We have
been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the
kingdom of the Son of His love. The work of God consists
of fathering our thoughts - thus making us like Christ.
Jesus came into our world in order to take us into His
kingdom. His kingdom is not of this world. He was
crucified and put to death by this world system. This
world system always attempts to destroy those who are
Christ's, for satan comes only to kill and to destroy.
The world system is very complex; it increasingly focuses
on the natural mind and its accomplishments. However, it
actually brings destruction for it operates in the lie,
and it always will. But Christ is just the opposite; He
gets rid of the lie. He follows His own pattern.
The gospel is good news! It is not an ecumenical movement
(whether in the flesh or in the spirit), for it does not
emphasize nor try to get everyone into the same
persuasion or church affiliation. It brings us out of our
old concepts of always being sinners, needing continual
forgiveness and going to heaven as our ultimate goal. We
are automatically one as we grow in Christ. Our oneness
is in Christ; that is the only oneness there is. If we
all grow, we will all have more love for one another,
more fellowship, and greater unity. This can only be
brought about by each individual expressing God and
manifesting Christ in a greater measure. That always
works.
Rev. 13:8 speaks about the Lamb slain from the foundation
of the world. In Eph. 1:4 it says that He has chosen us
before the foundation of the world. In these passages and
a few others, a correct translation of the word
FOUNDATION is DISRUPTION. The Greek word means CASTING
DOWN. Eph. 1:4-5 should read, "According as He has chosen
us in Him" (not by Him) "before the disruption of the
world, that we should be holy and without blame before
Him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of
children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the
good pleasure of His will." A disruption of the world has
taken place. Since there is more than one world (2 Peter
3), you may wonder which world was disrupted or put down.
There is a world that God so loved that He gave His only
Son for it. (John 3:16) This world was not disrupted. But
there is also a world that we shall not love, nor shall
we love the things in that world. If any man loves that
world, he is an enemy of God. (1 John 2:15; James 4:4)
That world is governed by the god or prince of this world
who controls and rules people's consciousness. People are
obeying him, but they are not aware of it since they are
in delusion. This is the world which was disrupted.
Why was the world disrupted? It was disrupted because of
the vanity of man. The word of God was put aside when man
accepted and obeyed another word - a word that was not
from God. So he came under another rule and he obeyed
that. This brought him into bondage to the one who spoke
that word. These are the spiritual implications of what
happened in Genesis. The world here simply means the rule
or a kingdom. It does not refer to the earth, sky or
seas. So the rule that was operating in Adam was
disrupted by the rule that came to him from a voice other
than God. God's kingdom is not of this world; in His
kingdom His voice is obeyed!
After the disruption of the first world, another system
came into being. This brought the whole world under the
control of the wicked one. That is why Christ, the Lamb,
was slain from the disruption of the world. All who are
under the rule of the wicked one are anti God. The whole
world is antichrist; the whole religious system is
antichrist; everything operating under this spirit of
disobedience, is antichrist. It is a spirit, a rule, or a
world. And He has chosen us in Christ before this
disruption. This was God's plan all along.
I want to impress you with the fact, that even though
Jesus was not of this world, He came into this world to
bring us into the kingdom of God. THE RULE OF GOD WILL
PRODUCE A CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD IN US AND BRING US INTO
FELLOWSHIP AND ONENESS WITH HIM! So we are no longer of
this world - we are of God! God brings us that
information through the Holy Spirit; He leads us into all
truth! That is what we follow, what we live by, what we
operate by, what we manifest and what we bear testimony
to! In Jesus Christ the rule of God was unadulterated! In
spite of the fact that we still stumble sometimes and
have problems, one thing we know - we have been delivered
from the old world system, the kingdom of darkness, and
have been placed into the rule of God's loving Son!! We
operate in a kingdom which is not of this world; it is
the ministration of an endless life! I like that!
The most important thing to remember is that none of us
as individual entities has either the power or the
authority to choose Jesus Christ or satan. We have simply
been overcome and persuaded by one or the other -
depending upon what has happened to us, where we are
living and what consciousness or realization we are
living in. It is not enough to be very religious, a
preacher, a helper, or a counsellor in the realm of good
and evil. We can make people feel good, feel religious
and dutiful (the communists and other people can do that
too), but we cannot give them, nor can they have, the
power or the authority to choose. We need to grow up into
Christ to the point where we know who we were and who we
now are in Christ. This is where the kingdom of God is
really operating today, and this is what is going to
grow. It is not going to grow externally, for it doesn't
come in the seen realm. The rule of God is taking place
in the spiritual conception of people who are submitted
to Jesus Christ. He alone is all wisdom; He reveals all
the wisdom, power and authority of God. All those that
came before Jesus are thieves and robbers.
Christ is the light that lights the entire world. Christ
is our life. We have to live in that consciousness! God
expresses Himself to us by the Holy Spirit - the Holy
Spirit bearing witness to our spirit. This is what we
live by, this is what we rest in, and this is what we
testify to. Often it takes time for us to digest these
things. Therefore we have to meditate, listen to the Holy
Spirit, and allow God to bring us into His realization.
As truth comes into focus for us, it becomes our
moderator. It becomes life to us! So consider what I say
and may the Lord give you understanding! Amen!
__________________
mandyjgay@gmail.com
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Julie Gilbert
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Joined: 07/29/2007
Location: United States
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Posts: 2593
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Posted: 05/16/2013 at 11:07am
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I had to copy this to an email to myself to read after
class today... its resonating in me .... thanks mandy!!
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See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you. Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing
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Mandy Gay
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Joined: 07/18/2008
Location: United Kingdom
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Posts: 1227
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Posted: 05/16/2013 at 11:41am
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Yeah, there's a lot in it. I'm finding I'm having to keep
going back and take another chew.
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mandyjgay@gmail.com
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Mandy Gay
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Joined: 07/18/2008
Location: United Kingdom
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Posts: 1227
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Posted: 05/19/2013 at 12:51pm
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Some snippets...
Lloyd Ellefson wrote:
"Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you
were also raised up with Him through faith in the working
of God, who raised Him from the dead." (v.12) We have to
identify with the working of God in Christ, for this is
how He works in us. We were baptized into Christ; we were
crucified with Him, buried with Him, and have been raised
up with Him. This has come about through faith in the
working of God - for it was He who raised Him from the
dead. God raised Christ and He raised us. We must see our
identification with Him. If we cannot identify with
Christ in every area, the area in which we do not
identify with Him will separate us from Him. There has to
be a total oneness with Christ before we can exercise,
manifest or realize oneness with God the Father.
... God is taking us out of our delusions and giving us
reality! The deliverance from our carnal mind, our
natural thinking, and our identification with death and
darkness, etc., is the birthing process we are presently
experiencing.
... Becoming children of God requires a birthing
and deliverance from the law, for it is contrary to us
and constantly produces the knowledge of sin.
... Our worth does not depend upon who we are in
ourselves - our worth is in our participation in the
Christ. Our oneness with the Father is in Christ. When
Jesus said, "I and the Father are one", He was
participating in the consciousness of God. So we too have
to live in His consciousness.
...When people begin to feel the remorse of sin, they may
want to find God, repent, feel better, or whatever. So
they apologize to God. This is a natural experience; the
soulish man cannot find any real meaning in spiritual
things. Since man first comes to God as a soulish man,
whatever he experiences is still in the soulish realm.
These human experiences become a part of his previous
consciousness. When a person wants to surrender himself
to God, he comes as a natural man who has no conception
of spiritual things - yet He wants to operate in the
concepts of God. The Spirit has to change man's concept
of God, otherwise man will continue in his former
concepts.
...Our natural consciousness is opposed to the spiritual
realization of God. To come into a spiritual
consciousness of God, we have to receive true revelation
of who God really is. True revelation of God does away
with the old. We have to operate in, and bear testimony
of who our God truly is! If our consciousness of God is
brought to us by Christ, then that is our life. If our
consciousness of God has not come from Christ, we only
have the consciousness of death, mortality, temporal
living, and flesh.
...This law only works in the new creation man; in Him we
receive a new realm of realization. In Jer. 17:9 it says
that our old heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know
it? Out of the heart of man comes every kind of evil. "As
a man thinks in his heart, so is he." (Prov. 23:7) An
evil man will continually think evil thoughts because he
is evil. We are who God says we are. If God has cleansed
us from all our sins, we are clean! God wants us to
believe we are what He says we are! He tells us we are a
new creation in Christ, so that is what we are!
... The Word of God (as a seed) cannot conceive and
reproduce
in the natural mind, because the natural mind is not pure
- it always commits adultery. But the spiritual mind of
Christ is as a virgin - it has never accepted another
seed. It reproduces the life that is in Christ Jesus, and
brings it forth in us. As this realization dawns on us,
we begin to see the greatness of what God in Christ Jesus
has done for us by taking us into His life!
A clearer realization of what it means to have Christ in
us helps us to understand this better. Christ cannot be
in the natural man or in an evil heart. When Paul said,
"Christ in you", the YOU he referred to is the new
creation man. This man has a realization beyond that
which comes to us in our natural senses. Even though we
continue to live in this body which is subject to cold
and heat, etc., we can rise up in faith and be
overcomers! We believe God will take care of us as long
as He wants us on the earth. He will supply us with what
we need to continue our testimony.
If we abide in the vine we will bear fruit, and this
fruit will remain! It remains - it does not come and go
like weeks, months and years. This fruit is simply the
consciousness of who we are - it is not something we try
to be. It will become evident in our lives and it will be
manifested in our thinking; it will also show in the way
we think of other people. The true sense of our being is
the Christ in us; it is a rest, it is what we are! It
becomes a motivation for our life. What a relief to know
that we don't have to strive to be something we aren't!
We don't have to strive to love people because we are
united to the Christ in us! (Hate seems to come naturally
without striving or learning it, therefore we often
identify with hate; but hate belongs to the Adamic man.)
We no longer have to strive to get people to give things
to us, to love us, to be like us, etc. Nor do we strive
to have power or control. There is a wonderful rest in
that! This is how we are affected by having Christ in us!
We are to present ourselves to God as those who are alive
from the dead. (Rom. 6:11,13) This is not what most
people do. They present themselves to God as sinners,
unclean, and in need. They get so distraught, and finally
cry out, "Good gracious, what's the use?" This is not
scriptural and it produces many problems.
Sin is the transgression of the law. So the one who
transgresses the law is the transgressor. Transgression
did not originate in us; something worked in us, causing
us to transgress. The only way we can rid ourselves of
thinking that we are the cause of our sin, is by getting
rid of our identification with that sin. We do not become
righteous just because we confess our sins. Confession
does not remove the nature or mind that conceives and
indulges in things which are wrong. We have to identify
with the righteousness that is in Christ Jesus. When we
agree with the scriptures, we will believe that we are
new creatures in Christ. We will begin to entertain the
conceptions that were in the mind of Christ Jesus. He
never presented Himself as a sinner because sin is a
transgression of the law. The law is the power that
causes us to sin. We are helpless in its grip. If we
think we have the authority or the free will in ourselves
to choose God or the devil and to do what we want, we are
operating in a delusion. Satan loves to have us believe
we have the ability to choose what is right, because he
instilled that thought in man. He operates in a delusion.
We have to present ourselves to God as those alive from
the dead. We have to be in this life before we can walk
in it.
Christ's mission was to minister an endless life
according to the order of Melchizedek. Receiving His life
brings us into a whole new sense of being. He takes away
the sin-consciousness, for it requires repentance with
all its accompanying sacrifices. We are neither satan nor
God, but we manifest whoever is working in us. We have
been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the
kingdom of the Son of His love. The work of God consists
of fathering our thoughts - thus making us like Christ.
The most important thing to remember is that none of us
as individual entities has either the power or the
authority to choose Jesus Christ or satan. We have simply
been overcome and persuaded by one or the other -
depending upon what has happened to us, where we are
living and what consciousness or realization we are
living in. It is not enough to be very religious, a
preacher, a helper, or a counsellor in the realm of good
and evil. We can make people feel good, feel religious
and dutiful (the communists and other people can do that
too), but we cannot give them, nor can they have, the
power or the authority to choose. We need to grow up into
Christ to the point where we know who we were and who we
now are in Christ. This is where the kingdom of God is
really operating today, and this is what is going to
grow. It is not going to grow externally, for it doesn't
come in the seen realm. The rule of God is taking place
in the spiritual conception of people who are submitted
to Jesus Christ. He alone is all wisdom; He reveals all
the wisdom, power and authority of God. All those that
came before Jesus are thieves and robbers.
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mandyjgay@gmail.com
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