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Grace Reigns, part 2

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This verse is like our view of the Redwoods.  There is much more than meets the eye.  Sin cannot overwhelm neither can circumstances be so impossible that grace is not waiting on scene to do “so much more.” Grace is a personal relationship working inside-out as well as outside circumstances - in.  It is about two persons in relationship! One person is you and the other person is too amazing to describe!

The other side of our grace relationship is God Himself. Not the image of God who is in our mind, nothing that small. It is The Eternal Reality of God Himself. The I AM Who creates out of nothing!  This  is the person on the other side of our personal relationship because we are in Jesus Christ. It is not only GOD, it is The Holy Spirit, it is The Lord Jesus Christ, it is the Triune Godhead Person!  I know! How can it be? Yes, it is the God of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses and the God of Jesus. Our grace is from out of God, our personal God, who provides power for us to accomplish His will ...  and so much more! This grace, the Grace of our Triune God, is “this grace in which we stand,” Romans 5:2.  How glorious is our God!

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Grace Reigns

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In our last discussion we focused on the new creation each believer experiences when born from above in Jesus, God’s only begotten Son.  It is righteousness, the risen life of Jesus, from the dead, gifted to us through our faith, by His grace.  His LIFE, in resurrection power, is created in us. This powerful Life is what we need to release His life Inside Out. This is one degree of Glory!

Do we realize the glory of our Lord God has been created in us? The Lord, who is a Spirit, has placed His Shekinah glory within each believer but it is only a taste, it should whet our appetite. 

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Inside Out

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Clearly, God’s glory is seen in physical light piercing the dense, living redwood fence reaching upward into God’s kingdom.  Much more than this, His organic glory within each believer connects us with each other as we grow consuming grace.  His eternal glory within us often escapes our attention.  His glory becomes our glory as our oneness in Him and each other is manifested even in our own flesh, Romans 8:11.

Here is one mystery of Godliness unlocked for the believer who “has ears to hear.”  Our soulish tendency is to rely upon self but the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple, Ps. 19.  When we “will” open the faith door into our mind and heart, we enter into God’s own sanctuary of counsel, Rev. 3:20.   His Truth is light into our soul so we can discern His “good” and become wise, Heb. 5:14. This is where we need to spend personal time! His glory becomes ours since we are His.

Glory

The redwoods reach into the sky pointing our attention upward.  They themselves glorify God because they are a living reminder that Jesus Christ is Lord. He is the living true Son whom God raised from the dead to deliver us from coming wrath, 1Thess. 1:10.

This world has already been judged, a judgment yet to be expereinced  but Jesus has satisfied our judgment, if we are in Him.  But more than this, while the earth is expereincing a horrific 7 years of tribulation and judgement, we will be attending a wedding, ...  ours!

Our life in Christ anticipates consumation of a union.  Being Spiritually born of God leads to a fuller spiritual union. The gift of the Holy Spirit within us witnesses our sanctification process leading us into God’s fullness.  We bring into His presence  the gift of righteous fruit from His life in us even while in exile and we will be His bride!

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Faith, Drilling Down

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Looking at the above picture, you are struck by the massive trees next to two small persons walking on a narrow trail bridge. If these two people are believers, they have within them something much greater than  trees.  In the shadow of giant redwoods, dwarfing the two small clay  vessels, God created again with resurrection power, life in these two people.  This is what is meant to be ‘’born again.’’

Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:24 our new self is created in the likeness or image of God in true righteousness and holiness.  The word created here conveys the same meaning used in Genesis when God created man and breathed life into Him.  This time, John tells us  in John 1, we are born of God Himself. God’s amazing grace purchased us, so once again, we are His possession.  The first time we were His by creation but this time we are His because He bought us and we gave our heart and life to Him. This time, we are lifted above terrestrial soil  and made citizens in God’s eternal Kingdom. While serving on this clay ball, already sin cursed, these two believers  walk in the light of resurrection power.

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Ethiopian Trip Report

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Our ministry trip was totally different than in October 2015. Diverse as they are, God’s grace is abundant in both. It isn’t geographic differences, our Lord provides according to the needs of His Body.  Our God is working in both ministers as well as the ministry. 

In October we traveled daily out of Addis Ababa.  This May 2016 trip was based in three geographical ministry regions. It was long and physical. But more than that, it was a faith trip through the “redwoods” of Ethiopia. Our Father continues to shape us into the image of His Son through varied communities within His Body. Love reigns! Our loving Lord is preparing His Church for a wedding.  Our trip is one small token step in His Bride’s  preparation of a forth coming eternal event. 

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FAITH, Growing in it!

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Faith is one of the most pivotal elements in the life of God’s people since it determines destiny and qualitative growth in our created existence of grace.  We are  Drilling Down  faith.

When I was a boy, we drove our 1935 two-tone grey Plymouth through a redwood tree. They had a one way road through one of these behemoths in northern California. A few redwoods are still alive today “who” were just beginning life when Jesus was born. It is hard to imagine how massive these ancients become.  I wonder how large we can grow our faith?

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Faith, What is It?

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Faith is one of the most pivotal elements in the life of God’s people since it determines  the destiny of our created existence AND our qualitative growth in grace.  We are  drilling down  faith.

January Grace Notes  listed 12 commonly known faith verses. One of many omitted is the following:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”  -Romans 1:16-17, (See also Habakkuk 2:4, Hebrews 10:38, Galatians 3:11).

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Grace Studies

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As ye have, therefore, received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding with thanksgiving.

Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of your brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed that is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God.                                            
Faith is critical to our walk in the Lord at every level. We are expanding our faith discussions so that we can look a little deeper into the mechanics of this important subject. In the previous discussion our focus was on the state of our being “in Christ.” The reality of our life has changed from temporal resources to unseen eternal resources which now are ours “in Christ”.  These eternal resources are defined in scripture itself and by our faith. We want to explore these resources and how to use them as a life style in Christ.  If we walk by faith rather than sight, if we walk by what is unseen rather than what is tangible, we need a whole new set of guidelines.  Before we do that however, let us review where we are and how we got here. Our faith is the reality of where we are.

We Should Walk in Them (part 2)

I seem compelled to search out little hideaways in the redwoods on my pathway of faith for GN.  I have making side trips into Revelation for several years  but it tends to become more and more consuming.  I started using some Revelation references in the current GN because faith includes who we are, where we are going and how we get there. It is truly a blessing to spend time on The Revelation of Jesus Christ! It is all about Him.

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We Should Walk In Them

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God grows faith through grace. Once we are born into His care, we become part of God’s grace culture.  This unique system of living is sourced in God Himself. Every circumstance of our life reaches into His personal nerve center because we have been bought and brought back into God’s personal family becoming children of God. His loving response to His children, who are in Christ, is an ability gifted to each believer according to God’s purposes  and our need. This is called grace. 

Our faith is joined to grace and has divine purposes.  We grow in Christ through our faith by His grace. Growing in Him is preparation, while in our flesh, for ruling with Him during His earthly millennium kingdom and then reigning with Him eternally. 

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God’s Faith Forest

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What a privilege to participate in God’s righteous nature and while actually being absorbed in His grace, gaining a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. This is what happens when we are born  spiritually of God. God is a Spirit and His Holy Spirit reveals spiritual things of Christ to us after we become a child of God, not of the flesh or the will of man, but of God Himself. We become Spiritually alive when we are born of God.

This puts our life at a very high level. Our life embarks into a Spiritual strata which can be mystifying and difficult to grasp.  Our new Spiritual eyes do not easily discern spiritual things.  We become Spiritually aware  but  often it is easier to revert to a habit of personal comfort and natural living.  The walk of faith is not for the faint. There is a battle here.  It is not mystic, but real.

This is our third consecutive faith discussion. We are still in the parking lot of  this great Faith Forest of redwoods.  But even in the parking lot a whiff of the air draws us into the wonder of something far larger and profound than mere humanity. On foot, under 300 feet high redwoods, old enough to have been alive while Jesus walked the earth, is a provocative setting to consider faith. These massive trees suggest powerful purposes and the God of this forest is our living Redeemer  soliciting our participating in what He is doing. And we say, “I’ll think about it. Can I get back to you?”  Oh, the darkness of our small minds!

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Walk by the Spirit (part 2)

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We took a look at this verse last time as an introduction to faith. It suggests by context both living and walking are different, living does not necessarily equate to walking.  The scriptural record is clear, our faith  links the resurrection power of Jesus to both living and walking.  Faith not only establishes us in righteousness but also provides the power to bring Jesus into our very soul so that we can live and walk in the Spirit. 

The question becomes, why do we want to move mountains and mulberry trees? Faith not only moves mountains, it does much more, it makes us righteousness. The task of making us righteous is greater than moving mountains and this is exactly what we are called to do.  We have been given the power to be righteous by faith. 

Walk by the Spirit (part 1)

A lot of different sermons come out of  Galatians 5:25.  Not likely you have heard of this one: “We can live in the Spirit while walking in the flesh!”  The issue of walking for born again believers seems rather clear cut but  wimpy steps are symptoms of something buried deeper.  Its like the disciples in the boat with Jesus who started discussing lack of bread when Jesus mentioned the leaven of the Pharisees, Mark 8:14-21. Jesus responds, ”Do you not understand?” Jesus had just fed the 4,000.

But the theme  joining these two phrases together in this Galatian’s verse is not overtly stated.  The actual word we are looking for is missing, the theme is faith, loud and clear! 

Ethiopia Trip Report

Our Lord not only opened doors to make this trip possible but continually blessed through His presence and the power in His word as we shared the message of being “in Christ” with our brothers and sisters in Christ in this ancient land of biblical beginnings.

My host, Mulugeta Ashagre, is the head of the Ethiopian Brethren Church denomination.  This mature body of believers comprises more than 200 churches and growing. My task was to encourage pastors, congregations and support groups in the reality of God’s presence among them. That is to say, we took a hard look at being “in Christ."

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Grasping Love by Faith ... in Christ Jesus

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Greetings from San Francisco,

I apologize for the seeming demise of Grace Notes. It was nice to hear some actually missed it!  Hopefully, we will tack to a recovery.

Our near term is a little bumpy as physical circumstances are in a bit of flux. But we know “all things” are moving toward a good closure somewhere down the road. I have re-located my VA “stuff” to a local storage facility in McLean. Daughter Kimi will be getting her DVM this spring, relocating from Pullman, WA to Alaska where she and husband Fred have their old home.  They are already planning their move. Dr. Kimi will begin her new vet practice  in Christochina, AK. :) 

Meantime, my trip to Ethiopia is looming with tickets bought and dates firmed. I’ll be gone for two weeks only on this October trip, 10/03 thru 10/20. My itinerary will be sent to me shortly. Our initial focus is expositional content pastoral directed.

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Grasping Love by Faith in Christ Jesus

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Jesus Christ is our creator. In order to create, you would have to exist before your creation. It is hard to think of existence before time but this is exactly the heritage of 2Corinthians 5:17 believers described in these great pages and prayers of the apostle in Ephesians.

We are in a journey from temporal creation into an eternal setting deeded those who live in God’s immortal love. 

Lavished in us are riches of God’s grace whereby we participate in a plan uniting both heaven and earth, in the fullness of time, all things in Christ, Eph. 1:7cf. This doctrine and its application are travel tools to prepare us for God’s eternal glory. 

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Grasping Love by Faith in Christ Jesus

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Paul has layered steps into the fullness of God from the posture of prayer. We have been looking at each step starting at the bottom, the fullness of God, and moving up, one step at a time, back to the top, leaving a staircase for our understanding into God’s love. Last time we looked at faith. It is our door allowing Christ to “dwell in our  hearts” allowing us to experience the fullness of God.  

Now we want to look more closely to what the apostle Paul means by dwelling in our hearts. The word he uses in the Greek is a compound word meaning House (οικοs) and down against (κατα). It is not uncommon in Greek to combine a preposition into a word in order to convey a nuance or emphasize a meaning. In this instant, the emphases is not just living in a house or dwelling in it but with the κατα formed into the front of the word, Paul emphasizes the full weight of God’s presence is meant to impact our soul-self. He is saying Christ may come against our heart so that we can know the full content of Jesus’ presence within our soul-self. 

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Grasping Love By Faith ... In Christ Jesus

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Paul layers steps into the fullness of God from the posture of prayer.  We examined rooted and grounded in the previous layer; its a similar couplet used in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, Col 2:7. But here, in Ephesians, its one deliberate layering of God’s requisites, including, knowing the love of Christ surpassing knowledge, the breadth and depths, having the strength to contain Christ, being rooted and grounded and now the dwelling residence of Christ by Faith within our hearts.  Here, in this layer, to know the fullness of God as a personal experience faith is vital.

The dwelling presence of Jesus within our heart is accomplished by unlocking faith. But this unlocking is accomplished in strengthening with power through the Holy Spirit, Eph. 3:16. But for the moment we are looking through glasses of faith and will look at  strengthening with power another time. 

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GRASPING LOVE BY FAITH: In Christ Jesus

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Our faith is based upon our knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ and our relationship with Him as a person.  A regenerated believer, one who has been born again, knows what it means to have new life. It is easy to identify by our experience of faith when Jesus Christ came into our life. But this new birth is an embryo of life in Christ. It begins a gestation period introducing us into grace accessible by faith.  Being born again is receiving Jesus factually! We literally receive the resurrected life of the person, Jesus Christ.  How is this possible?  … Love!  What has love to do with it? ☺

In human terms it is ridiculously absurd. This reality contradicts natural laws and our sense of what is possible. The colossal nature of what God has done is a measurement of how gargantuan our God of love is!  The regenerate person has within “self” a witness and testimony of the saving power of Jesus Christ as well as God’s immense love which drives grace. Paul says it best in Romans 5, it is so “much more!”