|
|
The Power of the Gospel "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rom. 1:16). Isnt it amazing that we live in America and people have not heard the gospel of Jesus Christ? The Apostle Paul says that the gospel of Christ is the power of God. So if you havent really heard the gospel and you dont understand the gospel, that is the reason that you dont have the power to live a godly life. The word "salvation" means a complete redemption from the Fall, which is basically poverty, sickness and death. The power of the gospel when heard with your spiritual ears will begin to deliver you from the effects of the Fall. You may have heard or read what J. Preston Eby declared last July (1998) at a meeting in Alamogordo, NM. He said, "The work is finished." We are now waiting for the unveiling of Christ within us. The Apostle Paul said many years ago that "In him (Christ) dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And you are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and power" (Col. 2:9-10). Once we have the revelation that Christ in us is complete, we then we grow in our awareness of Him. It is not that we have to do something to make Christ complete, but that we know that in Christ we are complete, and able to do all things that God would have us to do. It is a matter of shifting our attention and focus away from Adam (the carnal nature) to Christ. You may love God with all your heart. You may spend time reading ten chapters of the Bible a day. You might spend an hour praying every day. Maybe youve experienced the baptism in the Holy Ghost and speaking with tongues, and spend hours every day speaking in tongues. But yet, for some reason you just dont have the power to live the life that you know you should be living. If thats the case, you havent heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. We live in America, where theres a church building on almost every corner. There used to be a gas station on every corner, now there are places where Christians meet on almost every corner, and in all varieties. No matter what flavor, no matter what doctrines you like, there is a place out there where you will fit. And you may be in agreement with the pastor or the elders or the people that teach, but you still wont have the power to live the life, because you really dont know by experience that Christ is in you. You are perfectly convinced that you cannot possibly live as a manifestation of God on the earth, because of the experience of failure you have had at trying it. You must turn away from your failures of the past and realize that Christ in you is complete, and He certainly knows how to manifest Himself through you. Paul said the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation. Weve missed something. Weve all heard a partial gospel. Weve heard a gospel that has caused many of us to go to an altar, and many of us to say the words, and in many cases we have experienced something that we call regeneration. Were born again, but because we havent heard the full gospel, we dont have the power to live the life. Our Substance Is Spirit "The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, says the LORD, who stretches forth the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him" (Zech. 12:1). The people of God definitely need to have an understanding of this verse. Do you know that your body was made from the very dust of the ground? And that the land that God is really interested in is not a parcel of dirt in Israel? That was only the type. The real land of inheritance is you and me. We are the good land. "The earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof" (Ps. 24:1) and you were created from the very dust of the ground. The Scriptures use that in typology to show you that you are the land that God wants to inherit. He wants to infiltrate you. He wants to possess your ground. So Zechariah 12:1 is a mini picture, its like a flash of lightning, it doesnt give you very much explanation. But the first time I saw this it was like lightning. I just saw a flash of something! Zechariah 12:1 says, "The burden of the word of the Lord." Thats important. Thats saying that this is the burden of the word of the Lord. Then it goes on to list three things of creation: God is spirit, and he formed spirit in man. Oh, I hope you can see this. You are not just a carnal human being with a natural personality, but you are spirit. Deep within the recesses of your being, far past what you can think or know by natural methods, YOU ARE SPIRIT. Thats why Jesus said, "If you want to worship me, you must worship me in spirit." That means for you to really understand God, for you to really worship God, for you to enter into the presence of God, is not a matter of your intellect, its not a matter of your mind, its not a matter of your conduct, its not a matter of how good you are, its not a matter of how bad you are, its a matter of understanding that you are spirit. And to contact God is simply a matter of contacting spirit. God wants to fully infiltrate, permeate, and saturate your being. You see, your problem is not your conduct, your problem is not your habits. The problem is you havent understood that you are spirit, and that God, regardless of your condition or conduct, wants to, from the spirit person you are, infiltrate and possess every area, every avenue of your thought and brain. The Spirit of the living God wants to permeate every cell so that, as the Scripture says, "If He that raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you, then He that raised up Jesus shall also quicken, shall give life even to your mortal bodies" (Rom. 8:11). So to worship God is a matter of spirit. And if you think its a matter of conduct, you will never, ever feel worthy enough, youll never make it into genuinely living in His presence. There used to be a time when I would touch God by accident. Im sure you all experience times when youre in the Scriptures, or in prayer, or youre singing with the Lord, and He just fills you up, and its glorious. Its almost like, "I dont know how I did it, but God touched me." So we make up these songs about God, "He Touched Me!" But Im telling you, our experience is to be that we absolutely live in His presence. Not only do we live in His presence, we are His presence in the earth. You must understand that you are not a carnal human being, but you are spirit. And when you understand you are spirit, then you begin to understand how you could be His presence in the earth. Youll also begin to understand some of the deep mysteries like Paul wrote about in Ephesians 5:23. He said that you are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. Paul told the believers, "You are the fullness of Him who fills everything everywhere with Himself" (Eph. 1:23, Amp.). You cannot receive the gospel of God with the carnal mind. You cant try to figure out how this could be, because it will never happen according to your intellect. Arent we all well experienced in the failure of trying to be and live as Jesus lived on the earth? Do you have a problem when someone really upsets you, when someone does you wrong? Do you have a problem with resentment? Do you ever have a problem with anger? As you begin to enter into the reality of the Kingdom, you find yourself with the nature of forgiveness instead of resentment. As you begin to feel resentment rise up within you, you realize that those feelings come from the carnal realm, and you learn to turn to and release the spirit within you, and your resentment dissipates. Awake, You Who Are Sleeping! You have to know that you are not a carnal human being, you are spirit. God is spirit. What are you saying Gary, I am God? Not in the sense that I am my Father God, no! But let me ask you something, are you a human? Why are we human? Because we had a natural father, and he was a human. And so we are a product of the first human man, Adam and we have a human life because we are human. If you begin to understand that you are spirit and God is spirit, then you begin to understand that you have His divine life and nature. The apostle Peter teaches this in his epistles. People all across the world are beginning to wake up and hear the truth. As Paul said so many years ago, "Awake, you who are sleeping." Wake up! You see, Adam is sleeping and is in a dream state. But when you begin to wake up, the spirit man realizes who he is. In the very core of your being, you are spirit, and when you begin to wake up, you realize God really is my father. I do have His life. He created me. What did He have to create with? What kind of life does He have? The God kind of life, for lack of a better terminology. So what kind of life has He given you? Jesus said, "I am come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). In the original language of the New Testament there are basically three descriptions for our word life. In Greek you can use the word "bios", which is biological life. You can use the word "psuche", which is your soulish life, your mind, emotion and will. And theres also the word "zoe", the highest form of life, which is Gods life. When Jesus said, "I am come that you might have life," He used the word "zoe". In essence He said, "I have come to give you my life. The same life that courses and flows through my being, I am come that you might have that life, the life of almighty God! The life that knows no bounds and no limitations. The life that has never tasted of death. The life that has never been tainted by sin." You have, within the very core of your being, the life that is really life, because its spirit. Your spirit man, the real person that you are inside, has never really known what sin is. The Adamic nature has covered over your true nature. And when your spirit is regenerated and wakes up, guess what happens to you? That wretched person that you think youve been begins to fall away from you, the seed breaks forth within you and produces once again on the earth God manifested in the flesh. You dont have to be good to experience this. You can be bad and have this happen to you. The modern day religious folks can look at you as the scum of the earth, but God will speak life to you. You may feel there is no hope for you, but I could speak just a few words to you and bring life and restoration because when I speak to you the seed of Christ within you will begin to stir. And your heart will begin to burn, and your ears will hear life, and your inner man will begin to rise, and the outer man will begin to fall into the dust. You dont have to be good. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God. And we havent had the power of God because we havent had the full everlasting gospel revealed to us. Where Should We Worship? Religion has said that if you (meaning the human personality, your Adamic nature) want God, you must stop sinning, you must change your life, you cannot live this way and be godly, so you must change your ways to enter into His presence and to be favored by God. If this were true then none of us would qualify to enter in. If you want to worship God, you must worship Him in spirit. The woman at the well in John chapter 4 said to Jesus, "Lord, where should we worship? Should we worship in Jerusalem or should we worship on this mountain?" We are always looking for the right place to worship. Where is God? Where is He? For years I wanted to know, "God, what church are you in? Where do I go to find a place to worship you?" People have all kinds of different doctrines and theologies. You could run here and run there. "God, where do I find you?" I was looking for Him in the wrong place. The only place you can find Him is in spirit. You are spirit, and that is where you worship Him. I knew years ago that the answer, of course, is walking in the spirit. But to me the spirit was the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit to me was out there somewhere. I was told that the Holy Spirit was within me, but I didnt know how to get to Him to experience Him. So I was trying to walk in something that was confusing to me. The only way that you can overcome Adam is by understanding that youre not Adam you are spirit. And as you learn how to enter your spirit, you find that your spirit is one with the Holy Spirit. If you learn how to live and function from your spirit and release your spirit, you are walking in the spirit. Thats why Jesus told Nicodemus, "You must be born again," for that which is born of flesh is flesh. The physical Gary that was born from my natural father is flesh, its a carnal, human personality. Flesh and blood cannot, and will not ever, no matter how good it gets, enter the Kingdom of God. You must enter in through the spirit, for he told Nicodemus, "That which is born of spirit is spirit." That which is born of the Holy Spirit is your human spirit. Paul says, "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17). What does that mean, he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit? It is so simple, but because of our religious teaching we havent understood it. He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. So if I have been joined to the Lord, if I have been quickened, if I have been regenerated by His spirit, then that means my spirit and His spirit are one spirit. If I learn how to enter into my spirit, and I learn to speak from my spirit, and I learn how to function from my spirit, then God once again is manifesting Himself in humanity. But if I take my carnal nature and clean it up, and I go to Bible school and learn homiletics and hermeneutics and how to prepare sermons, I can then graduate and begin to teach you all that I have intellectually learned about God, but Im dead and youre dead, and youll never have anything of real spiritual substance with just intellectual learning. Everywhere I go, I tell people, listen, weve had nothing, and I mean almost nothing, more than a performance-based Christianity. Im talking about the systematized thing that we have out there calling itself Christianity, and denominations calling themselves the Church. For the most part, we have nothing but 2000 years of just dry, dead, theological teachings, with no power to give you life. Youve got to understand that flesh and blood does not count in the things of God. All the wonderful sermons and all the soulish prayers and the demon chasing mean nothing when it comes not from the Holy Spirit in your spirit. Youre going to see what the religious system considers the scum of the earth arise in a mighty awakening. When they find out that God loves them and that they can turn to Him and enter into His presence, then that will bring them change. You do not need to be good to change, you just need God. When God begins to arise in you in reality, all your old habits and way of life begin to just disappear. The more you fellowship with God and enjoy Him, the quicker you will see yourself change. Religion Tries To Find God Through Effort If youre set in religious theology and tradition, you cant hear this word. Its going to take a mighty shaking and a mighty stroke of lightning for you to see what Im saying. Im telling you that in Gods eyes a prostitute is no different than a man in a suit and a tie holding down a good business job. In the Garden, in the very beginning, what caused the Fall was man eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thats why were in this mess, because were partaking of the knowledge of good and evil. Were trying to figure out with our intellect and with our mind how by being good we can once again enter into the presence of God and be acceptable before Him. Every religion, whether its Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, basically teaches you the same thing, that you must, by different methods, make yourself acceptable to God so that when you die you can go to heaven. And, Ill tell you what, if youre the traditional Christian of today, you are no better off than the Hindu, no better. Believing in an intellectual Jesus does you no good. You must be born again! Yet, if you have the awakening and begin to enter into the presence of God, you begin to look through the eyes of God, and you will see that the Hindu, the Christian, the Moslem, the Jehovahs Witness, some of them have a deep longing and heart cry to know God. Some of them have been told that Hinduism is the way, some have been told that Hare Krishna is the way, some have been told that Christianity is the way, and all of them are lost, trying to figure out how to make Adam acceptable before God. It has never worked. Christianity has produced a lot of good people, and its certainly good to learn the good, ethical, moral teachings. You are much better off to be a good person than a bad person, but you have to understand that in Gods eyes the tree of the Adamic nature is both good and evil, and theres nothing you can do to make that nature acceptable so that your human personality, that carnal nature, can enter into the Kingdom of God. It cannot be done. But if you understand that you are spirit, then you understand that when God created the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, He also formed your spirit. There are all kinds of verses in the Bible that indicate that God knew you even before you were born. Do you think He just kind of knew you, like, "Oh, I know that someday he will be coming along"? I dont believe so. Before you ever came into physical form, you were spirit. Youre made out of the God stuff. And no, youre not a god in yourself, but listen, you get a few of us together, you get the body together, which we are going see in the days to come, then people are going to begin to arise out of these old, dead, theological places, and were going to begin to unwrap the grave clothes as they come out of the death places. And theyre going to stand up and shine with the glory and the manifestation of their God. It Is God Who Works In Us Years ago I used to cry and cry over my sinful, wretched condition. We all want to be like Jesus, but we have had this concept that we must do something to make it happen, and all the time all we had to do was realize that we are spirit, that God brought us into being, He is our father, and as our father it is His responsibility to bring us into glory. It is not Adams responsibility to perfect himself, but as long as youre trying to do that God has to let you see what a failure it is. You have to come to the total end of yourself and realize that you dont have to perfect yourself, theres nothing you can do to make yourself acceptable in His sight, because the fact is, you already are. You see, God doesnt look at a prostitute or a homosexual as a prostitute or homosexual. He looks right through the Cross that obliterated sin. Do you believe what John said when he saw Jesus? He said, "Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). We know that He did, and we know He resurrected from the dead as proof of what He said. If He truly was the lamb that took away the sin of the world, do you think Hes condemning the world for their sin? If only they knew the heart of God, if they only understood the grief and the pain of God who made this sacrifice for humanity, yet they dont understand and theyre still trying to perfect themselves by their own works, when all the time all they have to do is stop and rest and just begin daily to fellowship with Him. You can be a homosexual and fellowship with God. Just talk to Him, "God, you understand my condition. I know I cant hide from you. And I also know that theres absolutely no hope for me except that You begin to stir in me." Just begin to talk to God like that. He says, "I have a robe of righteousness for you." Oh, you may feel so dirty, and you may have unholy desires that you cant control, but He said, "I place around you the robe of my righteousness. When I look at you I see my righteousness. I dont see all of the sinful things; in fact, My eyes are too holy and pure; I cannot look on sin. And you know what, I really dont have to because I took it away." And you say, "Well if He took it away why am I still sinning?" If you understand what Im telling you, you wont be sinning much longer. Because coming out of Adam, coming out of sin, coming out of all the horrible, lustful things, coming out of that is a matter of growth and transformation. Nobody ever told me this. Ive never heard one preacher, ever, in my life, tell me that coming out of sin is a matter of growth and transformation. The only thing I was told was that youve got to stop it or God cant help you. And again I have to say, if God cant help you, you are never going to come out of it. If Hes not willing to help you, youll never stop. The only people who feel that they deserve to have what they have are the people that Jesus most strongly rebuked in His day, the self-righteousness Pharisees. He never condemned one person. We all know that the classic example is the woman taken in adultery. What He said was, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone." There was only one person in the universe at that time that had the authority to stone that woman. He was the only man standing there at that time in the consciousness of having no sin. So He said, "Any of you who is without sin, let him stone her first." Jesus came to show the heart of God, because somehow the Jewish religion had become so twisted that everything was a matter of keeping outward laws and regulations. So Jesus came to reveal the heart of His father. And He said, "It is written, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, love your enemies, do good to them who despitefully use you." Thats why they wanted to kill him. He said, "I know you search the Scriptures because, in them, you think you have eternal life. But God is standing in front of you. Here I am in all of His fullness and you wont even come to me that you might have life. You cling to your old concepts of the Scriptures." The Christian movement has done the very same thing. It has taken a word that was meant to give us life and has put bondages and laws upon us, and weighted us down with rules and regulations trying to make Adam godly. Thats why we dont have the power of God in the gospel, because they dont understand the gospel. Just look what Jesus did with a handful of men. And then look what a few men did right after that. They were so full of the power of God that just walking by them, people were healed. There was such a reality in that day of God being manifested on the earth. Paul said, "I live, yet not I, but Christ" (Gal. 2:20). Jesus taught his disciples who they really were. He taught them that they were descendents of almighty God, that they werent just mere human beings, but that they were godly men and were made of the same substance as He was. You see, weve taken the humanity of Jesus and weve elevated it and worshiped Him in His humanity, never receiving the word that He gave to us. Christianity the world over worships a man called Jesus, but has never understood and received His word. Its pitiful. The apostles understood it. And thats why the gospel of God that they received produced the power in them to live the life. We have had a doctrine for many years in the Pentecostal church that said, "If you want to be full of the Holy Ghost, you just come up front here, let us pray for you, and youll speak in tongues, youll be full of the Holy Ghost." It hasnt worked, has it? Tell me how its unified the church. Tell me how its brought unity and oneness among the believers. Jesus said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Thats why one of the most important things you can learn to do is to not throw the first stone. The problem isnt the people who are trapped in bondage. The problem isnt people who fill the churches that are dead and have no life. You cant throw stones at anyone. You throw life at them. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." The moment you begin to open your mouth in critical judgment of another, youve lost sight of who you really are. Youve once again slid back into the Adamic nature, because God condemns no man. Even in the Old Testament, before Jesus came along and sacrificed Himself, the Word says, "As far as the East is from the West so far have I removed the transgressions of my people." You see, your problem in not having the power of God is because you still believe youre an old sinful creature, and all the time the word and the spirit of the living God is grieved and crying out in deep intercession, "I am come that you might have life." The gospel really is good news, because its for everyone. Paul shared in 1 Cor. 15, "For as in Adam all died." Now we know thats true because weve all experienced it, havent we? What does that mean, "As in Adam all died"? Well, death to God does not mean when your body falls over. Death to God means that you are separated from Him in your consciousness and awareness. You have no awareness of God in your life. That is a walking dead man. Thats why Paul said in Ephesians that even when you were dead in your sins, He made you alive in Christ. The gospel isnt for the dead man, it is for the spirit man. And when you begin to understand that you are a spirit and not a carnal human being, behold the messenger shall surely come to His temple, which temple you are. So much of the Christian world, even right today, has their eyes focused on Jerusalem, and is looking for a temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt, totally missing almost every word that Jesus and the apostle Paul taught. You are the temple of the living God. And let me tell you something, the temple that is being rebuilt is not a structure in Jerusalem, but its a re-establishing and a rebuilding of the tabernacle of David. In the tabernacle of David, there was no separation between the outer court, the holy place, and the most holy place. In Davids tabernacle, you walk directly into the presence of almighty God. And when Jesus hung on the Cross and said, "It is finished," if you look it up in the Strongs concordance, when He said "It is finished", what He really said by the word "finished" is, "The debt has been paid." And when He said, "The debt has been paid," the veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom. That meant that no longer was there any barrier between man and God. No longer was it just one man once a year who entered into the most holy place and experienced the awesome, almighty presence of God. But now every believer has that ability to enter, any time, any place, in any condition, directly into the presence, and feast upon almighty God. Let me tell you something folks, that will take care of your natural disposition and your character. Then you begin to experience being a carrier of His presence. Again, you dont just enter His presence, you are the presence of God in the earth. The Feast of Tabernacles This is what is known as the final feast, called the Feast of Tabernacles. You see, in the Feast of Pentecost there was still the mixture of flesh and spirit, because in Pentecost we get the baptism in the Holy Spirit and we begin to experience God in us. We begin to experience His quickening power. We begin to hear His voice. But its still a mixture, its still me and God in this temple. Its still Adam and Christ. At one time Im in Adam, the next moment I might be in Christ. Pentecost is a mixture. The very best it can be is a mixture of Adam and Christ in one temple. As you know in typology, in the most holy place there was absolutely nothing there but the Ark, the presence of God. Now, what was in the Ark? The main item in the Ark was the tables of stone, or the Ten Commandments, along with the golden pot and Aarons rod. The Ten Commandments were not ever to be taken as ten laws. The Ten Commandments are simply an expression of Gods life. Thats why they were in the Ark. And thats why Christ was a type of the Ark, because the very essence of His being emanated the character of God, the expression of God, the life and fullness of God. When you enter into Tabernacles, you begin to experience times when you enter in and you realize theres absolutely nothing here but God. Adam isnt here anymore. I dont feel weak anymore. I dont feel the inability anymore to do what God says. I dont feel any lack, I just sense God is filling me. Do you know what it is like to stand in His presence and sense no guilt and no shame and no condemnation? You can only experience that when you realize that God isnt condemning you, nor is He condemning anyone else. We are entering experientially into the Feast of Tabernacles where there is nothing but God reigning in a people. Do I experience this all the time? No, but more than not. You see, nothing with God is instant. People like instant food today, like a quick hamburger. Things of God are not instant. There are a lot of people waiting and thinking that theres going to come a day when, presto!, were going to be changed into His likeness. Ill tell you what, thats a deceiving lie. Because you are being changed. Paul says you are being transformed from one degree of glory to another degree of glory, day by day. Youll never experience a quick, instant, one day Im fully in Adam, and the next day Im showing forth nothing but Christ. It doesnt happen that way. Its a matter of His life taking root, growing within us and producing the fruits of His life. Its not the works of the spirit, its the fruit of the spirit. Most all that weve been taught pertains to making Adam acceptable to God. And thats not fruit, its flesh. Fruit has to grow. Well, what is fruit? We can see in the book of Galatians that it is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, gentleness, meekness. These things are the fruit of the spirit. And as you understand who you are, you understand that you and God are one, not in your mentality, not in your intellect, not in your emotions, you are one in spirit. Then you begin to seek God to give you revelation of that spirit within you thats one with God, and youll begin to experience that oneness. God says, "My glory I will not give to another." If you are trying to get something of God in your Adamic nature, thats something other than God. You are not one with God in your Adamic nature. You are one with God in spirit. Thats why Jesus said in John 17, "Father I have given my disciples your word, they believed my word, they have been purified through my word." Isnt that different, purified through a word? You dont have to do anything. I used to tell people, if you will come and listen to the word, and if you will keep coming and listening to the word, you will be changed. I absolutely know that when I speak, it will change your life, not because Gary is anything, but because I have words of life. Jesus said, "The words that I speak to you they are spirit and they are life" (John 6:63). Listen, life is quickening, life is changing. Thats why you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that out there in the religious world, in the denominational system, there is no life, because life is always changing, life is always improving, life is always growing. And whenever you are in a place that never changes from year to year, and everything is set, theres no life. I can go down to the local Christian bookstore and get a book that will give me outlines and full written messages that I can learn so that I can preach every Sunday a different message. Theres no life in that folks. We must have life. When you get a hold of this, then the only thing you have for people when you go out on the streets is good news. You dont have a word of condemnation, you dont have a stone in your hand to throw at them, you dont have to tell them theyre going to hell if they dont repent. You bring them the gospel of Jesus Christ. 10 Commandments Become 10 Promises God doesnt even look at your sin. He said, "I took it away." Ezekiel 36:26 was a prophecy concerning the New Testament covenant, "I will take away your stony heart, I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and I will cause you to walk in my statutes." You cant do it, but you must understand that its His job. God is saying to you, "I have already given you that new heart. Ive given you a heart of flesh, Ive put My spirit within you, and now I am going to cause you to walk in my statutes." And then all of a sudden the Ten Commandments stop being rules and regulations that you have to try to perform, they become ten glorious, wonderful promises to you. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me, thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother, thou shalt not covet," because God has written it upon your heart. Thats why the apostle Paul said that you are epistles written not with pen and ink but by the spirit of the living God. When a man of God speaks to you, he does not speak to your mentality, he speaks to your spirit, who he knows you really are. And as he speaks his words, his spirit mingled with the Holy Spirit begins writing on the tables of your heart, and you begin to change. Its so gradual sometimes that it takes awhile for you to realize that you have really begun to change, but its all because youve come in contact with the living spirit of the living God. And Im telling you, there are men and women all over the earth today carrying the presence of God who will literally speak reality into your being. They will speak life; you will sense a quickening, an enlivening, a refreshing, when you listen to these people speak. God has raised up a leadership on the earth today that cares for nothing at all. They care for no glory, they care for no names, they care not whether they minister or someone else does. The only thing they desire is to display the loveliness of God to His creation, with no selfish motives, no selfish ambition, and they will recreate that in you. Its a great gospel, the power of God. But as long as you are sitting under a ministry that is trying to convince you that you have to make Adam godly, you cant hear this message. Its too easy. Brother, are you telling me that I can be a prostitute and still enter the presence of God? Absolutely, Im telling you that! Im telling you that you can be the scum of the earth, and as you begin to turn your heart, you begin to understand that in the deep recesses of your being, you are spirit. As you begin to fellowship and to cry out to God for an unveiling and an understanding of His love for you, it will absolutely transform your life without any effort at all on your part. I never thought there would come a day in my experience when I wouldnt have to try to be godly. I thought that was impossible, but Im telling you that today I never have to try to be godly, I never have to get up in the morning and determine within myself to walk and to give forth a Christian testimony. I dont have to do that anymore, its just natural. Just as it is natural for you to live your human life, when you get connected up with Gods life then it becomes just as natural for you to live the God kind of life. You see, its an exchange. Its not you being godly, but its God in you being godly. Its not you, Adam, becoming God, but its God filling you and becoming as you. Think of it! Theres a song we used to sing about this, in fact several. But one of them says this, "You are what is seen of Him who is invisible, You crystallize the One who has no form, you localize the One who is everywhere." You, you! You are the temple of the living God, and God is going to unveil your eyes. We need to understand some very simple truths, that we are spirit, that we have the God life in us, and as we seek Him we will be transformed into His image. You cant correct yourself, and even if you can you have to understand it is not by making the Adamic life better that we are changed. It is natural for us to try to correct ourselves, but whether you can or you cant makes no difference. What you must do is begin to talk to and fellowship with your Father and get to know Him intimately and experience the power of God that will enable you to live the God kind of life on the earth. I had habits in my life as a Christian for 13 years, and when God revealed this truth to me that my true nature is spirit I began to be transformed. I had been taught for years and years that Jesus lived in me. I knew I had experienced God, I knew I had been regenerated, but I did not know that deep within the recesses of my being I was spirit and I had the God kind of life. When I began to have some unveiling and some understanding of this, there were habits that I had struggled with for 13 years that just absolutely vanished out of my life with no effort on my part whatsoever. The thing that keeps you in bondage to sin is your concentration on it. If you want to stop somethings power over your life, dont give thought to it. The minute it comes to your mind, get rid of it by centering your thoughts on God, centering on what you really want deep inside. Focus everything on Christ within you. Do not look at what you are today in Adam. You have to stop thinking of yourself as you are today. The reason there is so much bickering and backbiting in the church, the reason theres so much trouble in marriages, is that we focus on the negative. Many times two people are attracted to one another. When they are courting and dating they see all the good traits in the other that attract them, but when they are married and they live together they begin to see the things that they dont like so well. Rather than continuing to focus on "Why did I love this lady in the first place?" I begin to focus on the things I dont like about her, and then I go to her and talk to her about it, and begin to focus on her faults and blow the negative so out of proportion that we cant even live together anymore. Weve forgotten what attracted us to them in the first place because weve allowed the negative to overtake the positive. And thats what happens to you in your Christian life. Youre more centered on your failures and your inabilities than on Gods ability to get you out of it. The more you focus on God, the more you spend time in His presence, the more you turn off everything and begin to center yourself on God, you will find that Adam will just fall into the dust. Youll never do it by trying to crucify the flesh, because thats Adam trying to kill himself, and he doesnt want to anyway and he never would. You are just fooling yourself. All Made Alive In Christ "For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who subjected the same in hope, because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 8:20-21). The whole creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, not one person will be left out. Now, go back to what I shared a little bit earlier in 1 Corinthians 15, "As in Adam all die". Every one of us were born into this human race, descendents of the flesh according to Adam, and weve all entered into a death state of being separated and alienated from God. So Paul says, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive." You see, the gospel is good news that leaves out no one, but you cannot receive it with the traditional Christian mindset. The Christian mindset says yes, Jesus died for your sins and He went to the Cross, but when its all over there will be a handful in heaven and the masses of humanity forever in a lake of burning fire. But the Word says, "As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive, but every man in his own order." I can guarantee you that if you were born into this earth through a natural parent, you were born into death. But I can also guarantee you that on the Cross Christ took the whole creation into death and raised it out of death. You may not be experiencing this now, but as in Adam all died, so in Christ shall every one of you be made alive, without exception. Its good news, folks. Are you telling me I can live any way I want to and God is still going to get me in the end? Absolutely! But let me ask you this. How much hell do you want to go through? It is no small thing for the judgment of God to come on your life, but if you understand the purpose of judgment, then you understand that God is never angry and vengeful, but His judgments are to correct you and cause you to turn to Him. "When your judgments are in the earth, the people shall learn righteousness" (Isa. 26:9). So you may go through hell, you may go through horrible judgments, but as youre going through, it will teach you righteousness. Will you suffer? Absolutely! Jesus taught that if youre not willing to forgive as my Father has forgiven you, you will be turned over to the tormentors. God knows how to get your attention. You throw the first stone and youll have a handful coming back at you. But if you understand not to cast that first stone and you understand the love and mercy of God, you will have that for every human being on the earth. Oh, if you could only have the eyes of understanding to know the reality of "He hath taken away the sin of the world," and that He will continue to judge the earth in righteousness until every human being bows the knee in adoration and gives glory unto God, and then they too will be manifesting the glory of God. Yes, judgment is a horrible thing to the flesh. Hell is a horrible
experience, but its not the end of the story. God told Jeremiah, "I will
make my words in your mouth a fire and the people stubble." In other
words, Jeremiah, when you speak to my people, the fire of my word will come out
and will begin to burn the flesh. Youll speak and the fire of God will begin to
burn away and melt away the dross of my people, and they will begin to
understand who I am and who they are. Oh, we have great, great things ahead for
us because more and more, day by day, youre going to learn these truths, and
youre going to begin to see God in such a light, such a revelation of His love,
that you too will never again be able to look at another human being with guilt
and condemnation. And if you do, God will quickly rebuke you and youll repent
and say, "Father Im sorry. I realize that they dont understand." So youll
become just like Jesus, who on the Cross said, "Father forgive them, they
dont know what they are doing." When you have the eyes of the spirit,
youll be able to look at the most rebellious, horrible, sin-laden creature and
say, "Father, forgive them, they dont know what theyre doing." They dont
understand that they too have the very life and nature of God within them that
needs to be awakened. And as you say, "Father forgive them," guess what happens,
for God has given you power to remit sin. If you pray over someone and they have
sinned, their sins shall be forgiven. You see, we have the power of life and
death. We can speak life to Gods creation or we can speak condemnation and
death. What would you rather speak? Click here print this chapter
|