(Note: God continues to remove the cover and reveal more of His marvelous freedom producing truth to His disciples. This article is longer than usual and scripture is included with it because it contains what is to me fresh light. For me it is revelation that resolves a paradox regarding the cross. I pray it will open and awaken your hearts to fresh light as you take the time to consider it prayerfully. I have written it with the love and boldness with which I received it. Please slow down and take the time to read it carefully. - Ron)
Love Transforming Into Life
By Ron McGatlin
Can you see it? I see a bright and glorious day soon to come – a day of eye opening awakening – a day of seeing clearly the spiritual reality of God with us.
There is deep need among the people for the brightness of God.
Look upon the masses of people moving about the streets of life. For the most part a cloak of the shadow of death veils their minds and there is no brightness in them. Their faces are dull and there is no glow of the Spirit emanating from them. They are like a dry land void of Spirit and barren of joy. They do not really know that their Heavenly Father loves them. Like abandoned orphans they do not know His love. They live as if they are not loved at all. Unloved people are not lovely people. They are unlovely in their countenance and in their ways.
When God’s love is being experienced in a person’s life, it can be seen in the brightness of their countenance.
Love is alive.
God is love. The Son of God is Love. Love is alive in Christ Jesus and flows to us by the Holy Spirit. The experience of heavenly love on earth is by the Holy Spirit bringing the presence of God with us and in us.
To know the love of God that produces the brightness of His glory is to experience His presence with us. Everlasting life is the experience of His presence continuously with us (John 3:36). Abundant everlasting life is our abiding in Christ and Him abiding in us by the Holy Spirit (John 10:10) (1 John 5:12).
A Sad Thing
A really sad thing is that some of the people that are veiled from the brightness of fully knowing (experiencing) the love of God are Christians who believe God loves them and Christ Jesus died for them. They know about the love of God. However, they lack the faith to fully experience the love of God in the reality of their lives now. They are not aware of the experience of His presence in the Holy Spirit manifesting His love in a real and practical way that melts their hearts and brightens their countenance with the joy of the Lord.
While confessing they are saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus, they cover their heads with shame and strive against sin of the flesh with religious restraint and performance. They feel they must take up their cross daily and fight against sin in their lives and in the lives of those around them.
Religious striving can open the door to the enemy.
Many devout Christians seek to religiously take up their cross daily and drudgingly battle their sinful thoughts and ways striving to deny themselves fleshly desires that emanate from the needs of their orphaned hearts.
A sense of lack of strength to become holy plagues them. They feel a driving unfulfilled need for the fullness of Christ and holiness. Yet they cannot fully reach or accomplish it. They daily carry about a heavy cross of continuous self-crucifixion and lack of joyful victorious living.
This opens the door for religious spirits to invade their minds. Religious spirits are high ranking spirits that can call in other familiar spirits, seducing spirits and unclean spirits that carry their victim further into bondage and servitude. The enemy veils their hearts with spiritual blindness and robs them of the faith for experiencing the fullness of the presence of God in and with them now. The supernatural characteristics of the deceiving spirits can mimic spiritual gifts, often causing the person to be elevated in the eyes of other believers.
It is the experience of the presence of God that brings forth His power and love producing victorious life of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit NOW.
Deliverance and spiritual healing of the soul is a product of the presence of Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit abiding with and working through the people of God.
A breakthrough of light is coming to many.
The glorious revelation that the cross is behind us and resurrection life of Christ is with us is breaking through the dark fog of incomplete and erroneous religious beliefs. The reality of our ascending into heavenly places with Christ Jesus is enlightening our hearts.
The light of receiving understanding that Christ Jesus never asked us to remain all our lives bearing our own crosses, but, rather, to embrace His cross and be crucified with Him and resurrected with Him and ascend with Him to the throne and at the same time live victoriously on earth with Him by the Holy Spirit.
Incomplete teachings have firmly planted the erroneous belief that victorious living in resurrected life cannot be a reality for us now in this life. This false belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and people of God languish in bondage of spiritual blindness to the reality of the glorious victorious life of God with us NOW.
It is the cross of Jesus that takes away our sin not our taking up our own cross daily. It is the resurrection life of Christ Jesus in us by the Holy Spirit that empowers us to live holy. There is only one cross that changes the destiny of all who believe and it is not ours, it is His. Denying ourselves and taking up our cross has its part in following Christ but it is not for cleansing us and overcoming sin. What then is the part of taking up our cross?
What was Jesus saying in the following verses?
Luke 9:23: Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.
Mark 10:21: Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me."
Luke 14:27: "And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
It is important to realize that all of these statements were made BEFORE the cross of Christ Jesus. They were made to those who were being invited to become followers of Jesus. These statements still apply to those who are being invited to become followers of Christ Jesus today. Jesus was not saying that the potential disciples had to be crucified on a cross of their own and then to follow Him. Jesus knew He was the one going to the cross. He also knew there would be great offense to His cross and to everyone identified with it (Gal 5:11) (Gal 6:12).
The cross of Jesus was to become the disciple’s cross. Their cross was the embracing of the cross of Christ Jesus. It involved leaving the life they had known to embrace the cross of Jesus and follow Him. Their cross was to bear a portion of the offense of the cross of Jesus. Our cross also involves leaving our past life to follow Jesus and to be identified with His cross that causes offense and persecution from the world.
There is only ONE cross to take away sin. As true followers of Christ we were crucified with Him. We are crucified to the world and the world to us by the cross of Christ Jesus.
The cross Jesus referred to when speaking to the people before His crucifixion was HIS cross and the disciples bearing the offense of His cross. Every mention of the cross after the crucifixion is of the cross of Christ Jesus. The emphasis is always the cross of Christ and our inclusion in HIS crucifixion and resurrection.
Gal 6:14: But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
We died with Christ and now live with Christ in resurrection life, dead to the world and alive unto God.
Rom 6:2-11: …. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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.
Our focus on our religious restraints and performance of rituals and practices (our own cross) dishonors God and denies Christ with us now. It dishonors our Lord, the cross, the resurrection and ascension. It dishonors and denies the Holy Spirit’s bringing us the life of Christ Jesus – the glorious provision of His presence with us. Like the religious Jews of the first century, those who hold on to striving religiously today have judged themselves unworthy of experiencing everlasting life now in Christ Jesus (read Acts 13:46).
Our belief and confession of daily struggling with sin dishonors and denies the provision of God with us – Christ Jesus abiding in and with us by the Holy Spirit. Christ in us is our hope (earnest expectation) of glory in this life.
Arise and shine for the light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon us.
Isa 60:1-3: Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, And deep darkness the people; But the LORD will arise over you, And His glory will be seen upon you. The Gentiles shall come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising.
Isa 60:5: Then you shall see and become radiant, And your heart shall swell with joy….
John 8:12: Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life."
Mat 11:28:30: "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."
1 John 4:17: Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.
Love never fails and His kingdom never ends.
Ron McGatlin Coordinator OpenHeaven.com
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