Before anything else, I just want a couple of things on record.
First, Christ and His finished work are the foundational Truth.
The identity of who Christ is will always stay the same – Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God (the only God, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) who is One with the Father and the Holy Spirit is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords; He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End; He is the First and the Last.
Christ’s finished work is absolute and will never change – He forsook His glory and was born as one of us, conceived in the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit; He grew up as one of us – eating with us, mourning with us, praying with us, laughing with us. These were the words He spoke to Pontius Pilate before He lay His life down, His body crucified, proclaiming ‘It is finished‘: That is, our absolute Reconciliation was complete and our Resurrection was guaranteed.
After three days He rose again, appearing to the disciples and then to more than five hundred witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:5-8) and so on; Then, after forty days, He ascended into heaven as the disciples watched.
In birth, death, resurrection and/or ascension, Christ always fulfilled His purpose: That is, to bear witness to the Truth. By His birth and His physical life here, He projected the love of God as a Father for all – men, women, Jew, Gentile, rich, poor, legalistic, liberal. By His death He satisfied the demands of a perfect and holy Law, becoming sin and dying so we would become His righteousness and have eternal Life, reconciled to the Father. By His resurrection He proved that He had drained the cup of wrath down to its dregs, that death therefore could no longer hold Him down, and that the Father glorified Him, in righteousness that left Him with nothing left to do but to come back to Life… and by His ascension He ensured that as He was seated at the right hand of the Father, so we were seated with Him in the heavenly places; As such, the Holy Spirit consequently came down from the eternal heavens to the disciples – and to all who would believe in Christ as Savior and Lord.
This is Truth that remains and roars, no matter what we see, hear or feel. It is not only in our core, but laced in and latticed into all that concerns us, in all of our being, that we are open messages of the Holy Spirit to this fallen world and to the darkness – missives of the Gospel of the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Second: As we continue to dwell on this Truth, and as we continue to meditate on all it implies and all it means; As we continue to observe and appreciate this Truth from all perspectives we’re allowed to see it from, we would automatically continue to keep giving thanks to the Lord, as an expression of our continued trust in Him. It also works both ways: We continue to trust Him in our day to day, through the great missions, the high victories and the damning failures, and through the boring times and the waiting… and in our trusting, we would keep thanking the Lord.
We trust Him, and we thank Him. We thank Him, and we trust Him. Ultimately, in the trusting and the thanking, and in the thanking and trusting… we flow in the Truth.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!
Praise Him, all creatures here below!
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host! Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!
Amen.
Father, thank You for these times. Thank You for Your solid reminders of Your solid Truth – of Christ, Christ’s finished work – and how we’re able to go through all we’re going through in our existence in this finite reality, flowing with You as You flow with us. Continue to be glorified in all that concerns us, in all we’re concerned about; Continue to be glorified through all that causes us anxiety, through all we’re afraid to face, and ultimately in all the darkness we find ourselves in… Just as You are glorified in our successes and in the blessings we receive in this life.
We thank You, because by the Truth of Christ, we are able to cast all of our burdens upon You, knowing that You care for us.
You deserve all the glory, and You deserve all the thanks… Thank You, Father.
By Your grace, by Christ’s finished work, and by the power of the Holy Spirit…
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Sorry, I thought I’d go ahead and establish that here and now, before I go ahead and jump into a book that was recommended for me; One that was sent to me, rather, as a response to me asking what literature or what material I could consume to help with ‘repairing’ a church. The nice lady I spoke to said it was necessary for values to be restored in leadership, and to that end I got a transcript from 2006 – a message by Dr. Jonathan David, ‘The Making of a Prince‘.
Sorry again, because I thought it’d be a breeze for me to go through a chapter and write about it here as I went along with it… but the content seems pretty dense – so dense, in fact, that I’ll just go through the Introduction here, before possibly posting about Chapter 1… next time.
Right. Just finished the introduction, and I’m going to zero in on a couple of lines I got from the transcript:
That’s why God is going to put His hand into the earth and He is going to pull out the foetus from the womb of the earth, and the earth is going to yield that generation to God. All she’s got to do is bring it forth, all God is going to do is take this generation out. This is what’s going to happen in the days ahead – God is going to put His hand upon this new generation and He’s going to form them. By His own hands He’s going to train them and put His work upon them.
Gotta be honest, off the bat – this vision, as in ANY vision or prophecy, has to point back to Jesus.
With this in mind, I go back to what I mentioned in the first part of this post, regarding our being made new creations, being ‘re-born’; By Dr. David’s vision I’m given another perspective to consider regarding how we, as the body of Christ, have been born again, and have been made new creations.
Actually, it’s a pleasant thought and consideration – that, before our being (re)born, our Father took us as a fetus, meaning we weren’t ‘going to be normal‘, we weren’t ‘going to be earthly‘; We were ‘going to be formed by (His) own hands and (we are) going to draw from (Him).’ This coincides with our being part a kingdom which Christ said was not being of this world; It gives a new picture to imagine regarding our being new creations – we are re-made from ‘scratch’ (has to be a better term for that), and, more importantly, no longer made from the same material, and therefore no longer having the same dependencies, ideas, programming, as we used to have.
The reason why I must speak this to you is because God told me by His Spirit that He is going to raise up sons and daughters of the king. He is not going to raise up just sons and man, or sons and daughters in the streets, but those who are fit for the palace.
Indeed, no longer does Christ call us servants, but friends – and, actually, the same Spirit of Adoption that has us crying out to the One and Only Creator of the Universe, calling Him our ‘Abba, Father’, has us consequently looking at Christ as the Firstborn over all Creation.
Wonderful. Through Christ, we’ve been reborn, meaning we’ve been re-made… and by the Holy Spirit we are reminded of our being sons and daughters of the Most High, dependent on (drawing from) Christ: Firstborn, Bread and Water of Life.
I’m going to take you to the life of Joseph and begin to show you there are four very important things that God did in his life that I want to leave with you. Four very important areas that will cause you to become a prince, and so that when you enter into that position of a prince, you will not fail.
So with all this in mind… well, I’m in for a wild ride. We’re going to take a look at our Christ-bought new identity. Dr. David would have us draw principles from the life of Joseph the Dreamer… and I’m excited to take a look at this, through the lens of Christ.
All for the glory of His name. Amen.
151665/365000
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
Leave a comment