Ron McGatlin
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Posted: 01/28/2016 at 9:41am
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Fulfilling
God’s Eternal Purpose
By
Duane Stewart
The message from God in this the hour of great
restoration is for the people of God to repent and turn away from sin,
including those hidden sins of the heart.
The trumpet of God, which sounded out through His raised
up ministry, is the method God has and is now using to give the Christian
Community every opportunity to turn from their sins. The meaning of a refusal
in hearing and obeying His call is resulting in a pouring out of God’s judgment
to both cleanse the earth and restore His people. The purpose in judgment for
restoration is that each vessel would finally begin to know that God and His
ways alone are to be the Lord of our lives. In this desire, God continues to
cry out, turn from your sins to a life of holiness, and begin to know God.
In walking in the ways of God, a pathway of life, joy and
wholeness replace that life of corruption, immorality and spiritual death.
Scripture shows us a promised time of restoration to a people for the spiritual
blessings of God is destined to inhabit the people of God. Ezek. 28:25-26
speaks to us of such a promise, “Thus says the Lord God: when I have gathered
the house of Israel from the people among whom they are scattered [throughout
many of today’s religious organizations and denominational church’s], and am
hollowed in them in the sight of the nations, then they will dwell in their own
land which I gave to My servant Jacob. And they will dwell safely there, build
houses, and plant vineyards; yes, they will dwell securely, when I execute
judgments on all those around them who despise them. Then they shall know that
I am the Lord their God”.
As God’s people put on the holiness of God this scripture
above declares that all the nations shall behold them. God is declaring that He
would increase them in all areas of life as they dwell in the safety of His
arms. These shall build houses and plant vineyards in the fruitfulness of God’s
eternal purpose. Meanwhile, even as we are beholding the downfall of the
nations all over the earth today, God’s judgment shall rest upon all who have
treated the true Christian Community with contempt. Understand that this
contempt has, until judgment purifies the house of God, worked from within the
camp as well as without.
God’s purpose in purifying His house with holiness is
that through His House He might judge the nations. Thus, with judgment
beginning in the house of the Lord, judgment is to then extend to the ends of
the earth that all may come to this realization, that all, with every knee
bowing, may know that He alone is God. For this cause, God is re-establishing
His house. He is again cleansing a people in the righteousness of God, that He
might dwell in them in the full measure of their calling and that they might
dwell in Him.
This confirms the truth that even though they have dwelt
in the earth realm, with the world contaminating the Christian Community,
judgment removes all source of contamination in such a way, that they no longer
have a mind-set and life-style of being strangers and foreigners, but have now
become the established citizens in the household of God. Eph. 2:19, “Now,
therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with
the saints and members of the household of God”. Paul again speaks of a
citizenship that is not of this world, but is one that when completely
committed unto will progressively bring change until the whole man in spirit,
soul and body benefits. Phil. 3:20-21, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from
which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will
transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body,
according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things to
Himself”.
With our citizenship being one of heavenly realms, we
need to consider just what it means to those who move in life as citizens of
the kingdom of God.
The restoration of the true Christian Community shall
cause the glory of God to manifest itself in measures of an unlimited degree. From
out of Zion the appearance of this, remnant people of God in the glory of their
God, become a people without walls.
The structured systems of religion, which have made
prisoners of God’s people behind manufactured walls that create boundaries of
limitations, knows a removal as God surrounds them as a wall of fire. Zech.
2:4-5, “who said to him, run, speak to this young man, saying: Jerusalem shall
be inhabited as towns without walls, because of the multitude of men and
livestock in it. For I, says the Lord, will be a wall of fire all around her,
and I will be the glory in her midst”. A wall of protection, a sense of total
security as God Himself purifies with fire all those who would enter this
glorious dimension in God, with increase in those who abide within. The nations
around about shall, because of judgment, look toward the people of God, His
city, while seeing God’s glory abound in the inhabitants with continual
increase.
What a place of joy, nothing unclean or corrupt shall
enter into such a presence because the Lord of Glory abides therein. This
people are the sold out citizens who belong to God and gather for no other
reason or name but the name (the nature) of the Lord Jesus Christ. This kingdom
has but one King, called the King of kings and Lord of lords. While many kings
live in this kingdom, one King reigns over all things. Thus, restoration time
is come, a people knowing this time of renewing, as God fulfills all that for
which He has purposed. Acts 15:14, “Simon has declared how God at the first
visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name”.
Can we not now testify of a change and the shifting which
is taking place within a responding people? Are you, as an individual, becoming
more and more aware that life as usual is neither completing nor fulfilling the
longing within for more of God? Could this desire be the Spirit of God moving
within to bring total change within the soul?
When God speaks to us about a people raised up in His
name, He is speaking more in light of His nature formed within that it might
manifest the nature of God in the earth. For this reason, God so freely
declares in Matt. 18:20 that His nature manifests from within a yielded people
as they come together. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name
[nature], I am in the midst of them”.
The kingdom of God dwellers are those people who follow
none other but the Holy Spirit’s leading whose sole purpose is to glorify Jesus
Christ, the head of this many member body of people.
The Holy Spirit’s method of glorifying Christ Jesus is to
guide His people into all truth. Truth heard, received and yielded unto causes
the transformation needed, allowing this people to stand in the glorious
presence of God.
John declares in chapter 16 verse 13 that this Holy
Spirit, sent forth from God, would lead this people into the truth as quickened
by God. “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you
into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He
hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come”.
Is it not so, that to the ones led by the Spirit of God,
they become the sons of God? This means that this remnant people are not only
hearing one voice, but they are following only that one voice. John 10:14-16, “I
am the good shepherd and I know my sheep, and am known by my own. As the Father
knows me, even so, I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And
other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they
will hear my voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd”. Could this
not be both the Jews and the Gentiles who have received of the Father through
the one and only Savior, Jesus Christ, to make up one house?
The Father’s house is a house with but one head. God’s
purpose is not to have many kingdoms but one kingdom made up of many members.
These members are members that make up His kingdom with each one putting all
things beneath Christ (their) feet. Eph. 1:22-23, “And He put all things under
His feet [head and body], and gave Him to be head over all things to the
church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all”.
God’s intent is that the church will be the present
physical presence of Christ in the earth. The church, filled with Him by the
Holy Spirit; they represent Christ to society as they manifest God’s love, life
and power.
The love of God is the fruit that is maturing within the
vessels that are becoming the truth of Christ. Eph. 4:15, “but, speaking the
truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ”. Is
this not speaking of growth individually as well as collectively, a maturing of
the body of Christ?
Likewise, the sounding out that is coming forth from
Christ and His body is a cry for the fullness to come, a cry for change in not
only spirit, but also the soul and body. This is making up a people who will
manifest Christ in all the earth as a saved people who are complete in Him.
Eph. 5:23b, “Also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the
body”. A people appearing that move in a like spirit of leadership, the spirit
of self-giving and devotion to Christ.
Another attribute of these victorious people is that they
are a people joined to Christ. Let us remember that the Christ is not only a
head but also a body with many members, meaning that a sense of unity prevails
in all things among the body of Christ to glorify God in all the earth. 1 Cor
6:17 declares that Christ true church is of but one spirit, “But he, who is
joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him”. Thus, a purifying agent whose
purpose is to continually sanctify the body of Christ in the pureness of God, a
people who give of themselves in spirit, soul and body while keeping themselves
clean from all other spirits which are motivated by the spirit of this world. A
relationship with God is a union that remains pure from all other
relationships.
In belonging to Christ and Christ alone, we now see
people who recognize and devote themselves to the fact that we belong to Him
and Him alone. We know we came from a fallen nature and have been purchased
with a price. This people own no one and no other but Christ owns him or her.
Note and pray for understanding in that which Paul shares
with us in 1 Cor. 7:23 when declaring, “You were bought at a price; do not
become slaves of men”.
Consider how much our ancestor’s affect us in our way of
thinking. Is this, our thinking, a teaching that has remained as a tradition
only? Lest we forget, let us remember, the ways of God are a part of those who
progressively God matures them in the things of God.
This means, for us, that the understood truth of our
ancestor’s is not to be our stopping place, but just a stepping stone, a
launching pad to higher heights and deeper depths in the mysteries of God. The
mysteries of God are that which He desires to open unto a maturing people
called to establish God’s kingdom in the whole earth. Slavery to man has been
abolished in Christ that we might become willing bond slaves to Him and Him
alone.
Another established truth of the kingdom of God is that
this kingdom people have no other life to live but the life of Christ. That is,
He lives in and through them as they become a crucified people who now live,
but now their life is His and His alone.
The error of much of the Christian Community is that they
seek to gain salvation by their works. Works of the law or flesh becomes an
offense to God when the only means to Him is through the cross. The work of the
cross accomplishes that which the law could never do, that is, the cross slays
the old Adamic nature and the Holy Spirit births a new nature from within,
which is the spirit of Christ’s resurrection.
That is, God begins through the workings of the cross, to
write His nature upon our hearts, our soul, that we might naturally manifest
the like-kind nature of God. For this cause, Paul leaves us with this reality
in Gal. 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me”.
The word “flesh” in this scripture is the Greek word
“SARX” and in its idiomatic use, the word indicates “the human race. In an
ethical and spiritual sense, it speaks of the lower nature of a person, the
seat and vehicle of sinful desires”. It is this flesh, even though we live in a
world controlled by it now, our flesh has been crucified, set aside that Christ
might live in us.
In this, we can agree with God’s word and roll up our
sleeves, put the mind of Christ in gear, and receive the gift that comes to us
through the resurrected Jesus Christ. No need for us to slip back into the old
ways of an evil nature, but by staying obedient vessels, we become cemented
into the way of life that is shaped by God’s life alone, a life full of energy
that manifest His holiness.
Is this not God’s desire for all the Christian Community,
to be holy as God declares, “Be holy for I am holy”. In this God helps man in
every area of his make-up, as we become dependent upon Him in all things, while
making Him our source in the spirit of obedience. Thus the kingdom of God is
come, and lives in us that He might be manifest in all the earth, fulfilling
God’s eternal purpose.
Duane Stewart
www.avoiceforthegatheringsaints.org
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